Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/121

Rh lingering at the unshuttered windows that she passed, now and then stopping to beg that she might have some money to take back to Tabby's mother. First a woman and then a man had given a penny to her. "I should like to get one more," she thought to herself; and so she begged again from two or three people as they passed her; but they did not give her anything.

She had almost given up the hope of getting another penny, when, turning round from a window at which she had been looking in, she suddenly saw a gentleman dressed like a clergyman passing by, and she thought she would make one last effort to beg from him. So she ran after him quickly, and made her usual petition.

"Please, sir, give me a halfpenny," she said, in her little sad, thin voice, trotting along a step behind him.

He made no answer to her first appeal, and so then she spoke a second time.

"Please, sir, give me a halfpenny," she repeated wearily. And this time there was a tremor — almost a break — in the weak voice, and touched, perhaps, by the sound of it, the gentleman turned round.

He turned round, and — what face do you think it was that Janet saw? For the first wild moment as she looked up to it she could not believe her eyes; for a few moments her breath went from her.

"Janet!" exclaimed the gentleman. At the sound of that voice, with a great cry the child burst into tears.

"I didn't know — oh, I didn't know!" she began piteously to sob, so cowed and crushed that even when she saw the kind eyes looking at her, her first impulse was to shrink from them, as if she expected, not kindness, but a blow.

But a pair of strong arms lifted her suddenly from the ground.

"My poor child — my poor child!" the familiar voice said again, with such a tone of pity in it that it pierced to the dreary, frightened heart; and with the burden taken from it at last — with all the weary wanderings at last ended — Janet was wildly sobbing the next moment under gas-lamps, and clasping both her hands tight round Dr. Jessop's neck.

It was a December night when Janet found her friend. It is summer-time again now, and the leaves are green on the trees she used to love, and the strawberries are ripening once more in the old garden where she used to gather them; and in the parlor at the rectory a little girl is sitting with a grave pale face and soft grey eyes, that glance up sometimes, with perhaps a little look of longing in them, from the book before her to the open window where the sunshine and the breeze are coming in.

"My dear," Mrs. Jessop says, "you have got your sum still to do, you know."

"Oh, yes, I know," Janet answers quickly; and so does her sum, and then jumps gladly up.

There is the same little pony in the rectory stables that she used to ride a year ago; there are the same old people in the village; the same children, only grown a year older. Instead of one companion, Janet has all the young people of the rectory for her companions now; instead of one playfellow, a little troop of playfellows, with whom she rambles about the pleasant lanes and fields. And she is cared for, and loved, and happy, in the kind new home that is both old and new together, and that is dear from a hundred memories of the days that used to be. Yet, happy as she is, sometimes, when all the others are at play, that little face of hers looks sad and wistful still; and sometimes, when the glad voices of her new friends are in her ears, she thinks sorrowfully of one little pair of lips that are sealed forever, and longs for the sound of one voice that she will never hear again.

 

 From Fraser's Magazine.

may not be altogether unprofitable, even in these peaceful times (how long will they last?), to glance for a moment at modern warfare. It is not proposed to approach the subject technically; but simply to compare, from certain points of view, the warfare of the present with that of the past, and possibly to draw one or two conclusions from the comparison. There exists a certain class of theorists who hail every fresh invention for the slaughter of mankind with the remark: "I am delighted to hear of it; for the more horrible you make war, the sooner you will put an end to it."

Without stopping to question the correctness of this theory, let us proceed to inquire whether all the murderous science which has lately been expended on war has in reality succeeded in making it more horrible; and, if so, for whom? For in this question there are two classes to be considered — the soldier, and the civilian 