face of the earth

-Punch with no one to give orders to, Judy too young for anything, and Papa and Mamma grave, distracted, and choking.

Where,' demanded Punch, wearied of a loathsome contrivance on four wheels with a mound of luggage atopwhere is our broom-gharri? This thing talks so much that I can't talk. Where is our own broom

gharri? When I was at Bandstand before we comed away, I asked Inverarity Sahib why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. And I said, "I will give it you"-I like Inverarity Sahib-and I said, "Can you put your legs through the pully-wag loops by the windows?" And Inverarity Sahib said No, and laughed. I can put my legs through the pully-wag loops. I can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. Look! Oh, Mamma's crying again! I didn't know I wasn't not to do so.'

Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the fourwheeler: the door opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the door of an austere little villa whose gates bore the legend 'Downe Lodge.' Punch gathered himself together and eyed the house with disfavour. It stood on a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knickerbockered legs.

'Let us go away,' said Punch. This is not a pretty place.'

But Mamma and Papa and Judy had left the cab, and all the luggage was being taken into the house. At the doorstep stood a woman in black, and she smiled largely, with dry chapped lips. Behind her was a man, big, bony, gray, and lame as to one leg-behind him a boy of twelve, black-haired and oily in appearance. Punch surveyed the trio, and advanced without fear, as he had

been accustomed to do in Bombay when callers came and he happened to be playing in the veranda.

'How do you do?' said he. 'I am Punch.' But they were all looking at the luggage-all except the gray man, who shook hands with Punch, and said he was 'a smart little fellow.' There was much running about and banging of boxes, and Punch curled himself up on the sofa in the dining-room and considered things.

'I don't like these people,' said Punch. But never mind. We'll go away soon. We have always went away soon from everywhere. I wish we was gone back to Bombay soon.'

The wish bore no fruit. For six days Mamma wept at intervals, and showed the woman in black all Punch's clothes a liberty which Punch resented. But p'raps she's a new white ayah,' he thought. I'm to call her Antirosa, but she doesn't call me Sahib. She says just Punch,' he confided to Judy. What is Antirosa?'

Judy didn't know. Neither she nor Punch had heard anything of an animal called an aunt. Their world had been Papa and Mamma, who knew everything, permitted everything, and loved everybody even Punch when he used to go into the garden at Bombay and fill his nails with mould after the weekly nail-cutting, because, as he explained between two strokes of the slipper to his sorely tried Father, his fingers felt so new at the ends.'

In an undefined way Punch judged it advisable to keep both parents between himself and the woman in black and the boy in black hair. He did not approve of them. He liked the gray man, who had expressed a wish to be called Uncleharri.' They nodded at each

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other when they met, and the gray man showed him a little ship with rigging that took up and down.

'She is a model of the Brisk-the little Brisk that was sore exposed that day at Navarino.' The gray man hummed the last words and fell into a reverie. I'll tell you about Navarino, Punch, when we go for walks together; and you mustn't touch the ship, because she's the Brisk.'

Long before that walk, the first of many, was taken, they roused Punch and Judy in the chill dawn of a February morning to say Good-bye; and of all people in the wide earth to Papa and Mamma-both crying this time. Punch was very sleepy and Judy was cross. 'Don't forget us,' pleaded Mamma. Oh, my little son, don't forget us, and see that Judy remembers too.' 'I've told Judy to bemember,' said Punch, wriggling, for his father's beard tickled his neck. I've told Judy-ten- forty- 'leven thousand times. But Ju's so young-quite a baby-isn't she?'

'Yes,' said Papa, 'quite a baby, and you must be good to Judy, and make haste to learn to write and and-and

Punch was back in his bed again. Judy was fast asleep, and there was the rattle of a cab below. Papa and Mamma had gone away. Not to Nassick; that was across the sea. To some place much nearer, of course, and equally of course they would return. They came back after dinner-parties, and Papa had come back after he had been to a place called 'The Snows,' and Mamma with him, to Punch and Judy at Mrs. Inverarity's house in Marine Lines. Assuredly they would come back again. So Punch fell asleep till the true morning, when the black-haired boy met him with the in

formation that Papa and Mamma had gone to Bombay, and that he and Judy were to stay at Downe Lodge 'for ever.' Antirosa, tearfully appealed to for a contradiction, said that Harry had spoken the truth, and that it behooved Punch to fold up his clothes neatly on going to bed. Punch went out and wept bitterly with Judy, into whose fair head he had driven some ideas of the meaning of separation.

When a matured man discovers that he has been deserted by Providence, deprived of his God, and cast, without help, comfort, or sympathy, upon a world which is new and strange to him, his despair, which may find expression in evil-living, the writing of his experiences, or the more satisfactory diversion of suicide, is generally supposed to be impressive. A child, under exactly similar circumstances as far as its knowledge goes, cannot very well curse God and die. It howls till its nose is red, its eyes are sore, and its head aches. Punch and Judy, through no fault of their own, had lost all their world. They sat in the hall and cried; the black-haired boy looking on from afar.

The model of the ship availed nothing, though the gray man assured Punch that he might pull the rigging up and down as much as he pleased; and Judy was promised free entry into the kitchen. They wanted Papa and Mamma gone to Bombay beyond the seas, and their grief while it lasted was without remedy.

When the tears ceased the house was very still. Antirosa had decided that it was better to let the children have their cry out,' and the boy had gone to school. Punch raised his head from the floor and sniffed mournfully. Judy was nearly asleep. Three

short years had not taught her how to bear sorrow with full knowledge. There was a distant, dull boom in the aira repeated heavy thud. Punch knew that sound in Bombay in the Monsoon. It was the sea-the sea that must be traversed before any one could get to Bombay. Quick, Ju!' he cried, we're close to the sea. 6 I can

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hear it! Listen! That's where they've went. P'raps we can catch them if we was in time. They didn't mean to go without us. They've only forgot.'

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'Iss,' said Judy. They've only forgotted. Less go to the sea.'

The hall-door was open and so was the garden-gate. 'It's very, very big, this place,' he said, looking cautiously down the road, and we will get lost; but I will find a man and order him to take me back to my house -like I did in Bombay.'

He took Judy by the hand, and the two ran hatless in the direction of the sound of the sea. Downe Villa was almost the last of a range of newly-built houses running out, through a field of brick-mounds, to a heath where gypsies occasionally camped and where the Garrison Artillery of Rocklington practised. There were few people to be seen, and the children might have been taken for those of the soldiery who ranged far. Half an hour the wearied little legs tramped across heath, potato-patch, and sand-dune.

'I'se so tired,' said Judy, ‘and Mamma will be angry.' 'Mamma's never angry. I suppose she is waiting at the sea now while Papa gets tickets. We'll find them and go along with. Ju, you mustn't sit down. Only a little more and we'll come to the sea. Ju, if you sit down I'll thmack you!' said Punch.

They climbed another dune, and came upon the great