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Mabel was lifted, in silence, into the carriage, when instantly jumping out again, she ran to her grandfather and almost sobbed, though the childish voice was steadied with a resolution which would have done honour to nineteen, instead of nine. "My dear grandfather, I did not say good-by; I will do everything I am told-;I will be so very, very good!" and our little heroine ran back eagerly, to the carriage.

Mabel Dacre was an orphan, but utterly unsaddened by the memories which make the sorrow of an orphan. The darling and delight of her grandfather, she had never known a grief which had not been shared-;a care which had not been soothed. Her whole life had been spent in the country, and her cheek was as red as the roses that had grown up with her, and her step as light as the wind; and, to say the truth, nearly as unchecked. Little, affectionate, kind-hearted thing! having her own way was not so bad for her as it usually is-;still it was bad enough. The warm feelings, uncontrolled, had degenerated into passionate ones; the lively temper, uncurbed, was grown wayward and violent: the mind, uncultivated, became idle and vacant; and, at the age of nine, Mabel Dacre was headstrong, rude, ignorant, and awkward; in short, running as wild as any neglected shrub in the garden. Day after day was spent in scampering over the grounds, her only companion a white greyhound as wilful as herself. Companions she had few; far from neighbours of their own station, they lived at a distance; and the children of the peasantry shrank from one whose extreme indulgence had, as extreme indulgence always does, rendered selfish and overbearing. Mabel saw she was disliked, and also felt her own deficiencies; for, only last Christmas, she had been taught her first lesson, in mortification. Now, bitter, but useful, mortification is the steppingstone to knowledge, even in a child.

Mr. Dacre had a daughter, Mrs. Harcourt, who together with a fine family, lived at a distance; but last Christmas she and her four daughters had volunteered Mr. Dacre a visit. Mabel had been impatient for the arrival of her cousins, to a degree that had put a stop do either sleeping, eating, playing, or, indeed, any faculty but talking: she would do this, that, and the other (to use a favourite phrase of her nurse's,) when her cousins arrived. Nay, her generosity had arrived, in imagination, even to letting them have her pony-;a little, rough, wild animal, which had once or twice nearly broken her neck, but was, nevertheless, a prodigious favourite. The day arrived-;she was awake long before, and up as soon as it was light, though she had been duly informed it was impossible they could arrive before evening.

The four moved their chairs forward at once, and then resumed their silence and stillness. Mabel, almost unconsciously, pushed back her stool which was drawn close to the fender. Mrs. Harcourt talked to her father, and the young ladies looked at each other, and at the stranger, slightingly enough. Mabel felt rather than saw, that the looks had more of contempt than it was quite agreeable to suppose directed to herself. She glanced at them from time to time, when she thought herself unobserved; the Misses Harcourt seemed beings of another nature; and naturally enough, exaggerating their advantages, found her self-estimate greatly lowered in the contrast. She felt a secret consciousness of being ridiculous-;a fear singularly prompt to enter a childish mind; and, moreover, she was disappointed, though she knew not well how. With what joy did she hear supper announced!-;and hastily assuming a seat, began to heap her cousin's plates with every delicacy in her reach. Faint "No, thank you's" rewarded her trouble, when Mrs. Harcourt said, in her chilly, but dictatorial manner, "Do you allow Miss Dacre to eat all this pastry? I never allow my daughters to touch any thing so unwholesome!" And Mabel saw with dismay, her cousins sup upon a roast apple, a piece of bread, and a glass of plain water.

"Well, did you ever see such an uncouth creature as our new cousin-;dressed such a figure? Why she's a complete Hottentot!"

Mabel withdrew indignantly to her bed, and there fairly cried herself to sleep. Not, however, till she had reflected a full hour touching what "a Hottentot" could possibly be. "Give me my darkest frock," said Mabel to the old servant who dressed her. She had already contrasted her appearance with that of her guests, and, in her mind's eye, saw herself in-;alas, for poor Mabel's taste! a frock of brocaded silk, where each large flower covered half a breadth; it had been a gown of her grandmother's, its gay colours had marvellously attracted her childish admiration, and she had never rested till a best frock had been made from its ample folds. Besides the hues of the rainbow in her garb, she had also decorated herself with divers strings of coloured beads and bugles, twisted about her neck and arms which eagerness and cold had dyed a double red. Moreover, she contemplated her curled head (her hair curled naturally) with no sort of satisfaction. She recalled the strangers dressed in dark green merino frocks, up to the throat and down to the wrist; the gloves, which were almost part of the hands they covered; the neat black slipper. Mabel thought to herself, "mine were down at heel;" and then their heads, the youngest had the hair simply parted back; in the second it was allowed to curl in the neck; the third had it also curled in the front, while Miss Harcourt, the eldest, had arrived at the dignity (and an epoch it is in a young lady's life) of having her hair turned up behind, and a comb. "She is hardly three years older than I am," thought Mabel.

Poor Mabel asked no farther questions. Mrs. Harcourt now arrived to breakfast with her father. The young ladies had taken theirs an hour before, but just came in to wish Mr. Dacre good morning, and then departed. Mabel looked after them, and felt as if she had no right to her usual place. "Is it possible," exclaimed Mrs. Harcourt, "that you suffer Miss Dacre to have chocolate for breakfast? It is what I would not allow one of my own children to touch." To be called "Miss Dacre," to be eating what her visiters would not be allowed to partake!-;She could not swallow another spoonful. chocolate was no indulgence to her, at all events, to-day. Mrs. Harcourt, after breakfast, proposed her niece should accompany her to what was to be the school-room. "During Miss Dormer's holidays, I take the office of governess on myself." How endless the morning seemed to Mabel!-;how wearisome the various catechisms out of which they recited dates, names, &c., in the driest and the most didactic order. And as for the harp, which the eldest Miss Harcourt practised for two hours, Mabel wondered how she had ever liked music. The hours of study were succeeded by those of relaxation, and the four sisters proceeded to walk up and down the terrace in the sun; beyond this their young hostess could not allure them. All her efforts for their entertainment were equally fruitless; they screamed when her greyhound came bounding towards them; shuddered with half real, half affected, horror, when she proposed a ride on her pony; and, when she challenged her youngest cousin to a race, she was struck dumb with their answer-;that such very violent exercise was only fit for boys.

"I can permit no daughter of mine to take what has been procured in so disgraceful a manner. Young ladies, you will return with me to the house." Poor Mabel was left standing by herself, equally dismayed and disconsolate, on the terrace. But the mortifications of the ensuing day were even more acute. It was her grandfather's birthday, and each of the Misses Harcourt had some pretty present of their own work to offer him. The eldest brought a drawing-;her latest and best performance; the second had netted him a brown silk purse; the third had embroidered a velvet case for his spectacles; and the youngest had hemmed a silk handkerchief, and neatly marking it with his name. And poor Mabel had nothing to give. Her little heart swelled even to bursting, and she stole out of the room to hide her tears, that came thick and fast.

The silence, the stillness, the order, to say nothing of the lessons, were very dreadful in Mabel's eyes. Then she had the mortification of being behindhand with the very youngest of her companions. She had no available knowledge. True, her habit of reading aloud to her grandfather had given her a stock of information really uncommon at her age; but it was very miscellaneous, and not at all useful as regarded her present course of study. The rest of the girls, finding that at the age of ten, she could do nothing more than read and write, immediately set her down as a dunce, and a new feeling, that of timidity, interfered sadly with her progress-;for Mabel was really a quick child.

Shy, keenly alive to ridicule, and unaccustomed to girls of her own age, she experienced insuperable difficulties in the way of getting acquainted with her school-fellows; they were to her strangers, if not enemies. The trees in the garden seemed her only friends; a dwarf oak was an especial favourite-;it reminded her of one at the hall. Her rural tastes at last led her into a great error. The gardener, a good-natured old man, whose heart inclined to a young lady whose interest in a patch of mustard and cress seemed almost as great as his own,one unlucky morning made her a present of a wicker cage containing a young owl, and a little frightful creature it was, to be sure. Still, had it been the celebrated queen bird of the fairy tales, it could not have been more highly valued.

"Not so much," said Miss Smythe, "for keeping the bird-;that I might have permitted-;but for the deception of the concealment." It made Mabel's sorrows more acute to know herself how improperly she had acted. The day after she was seriously ill with a sore throat, and cough, and had to get well on the cold comfort that it was entirely her own fault. Gradually, however, she was becoming more popular with her schoolfellows. The first fortnight had taught the useful lesson that she was of no consequence, the second brought with it the want of friends, and the third, the wish to acquire them. She soon saw that she must put herself out of the way for the sake of others, and that kindness must be reciprocal; now, she was not naturally selfish, and its acquired habit soon wore off. From one extreme she ran into another, and the desire of popularity became an absolute passion. Her injudicious desire of obliging, right or wrong, led her into continual scrapes. The last was the worst. There was an old woman who was allowed, once a week, to supply the school with cakes, fruit, &c.; but, besides this regular commerce, unhappily a good deal of smuggling went on, and divers sweet things entered the house unknown to the Misses Smythe. One evening, Mabel's ingenuity had been exerted in procuring a cherry pie, for which her purse also had paid. As soon as the teachers had gone their usual rounds, and descended to supper, the pupils prepared to eat their pie, for which the long summer evening afforded ample light: the road to the mouth is a very obvious one. Suddenly a staid and well-known step was heard on the stairs. It was that of the younger Miss Smythe.

The next morning, an exclamation of horror from Mabel awoke all the girls. The pie, turned upside down in the scuffle, had let all its juice run through on the bed-;the pretty French bed, white as snow, on which the Misses Smythe so prided themselves-;the furniture was utterly spoiled. In the midst of their dismay, and their unkindly reproached to Mabel, who was called "such a stupid awkward thing," one of the teachers entered. The alarm was given, and Miss Smythe's anger at its height. The next day, when Mr. Dacre called to take Mabel home for the holidays, he was told that his granddaughter was quite incorrigible, and really required severer discipline than was practised at the Misses Smythe's establishment. Mabel came there weeping, and so she left it. But her sorrow yet admitted of augmentation.

Early lessons are invaluable ones, and Mabel never forgot her first experiences. Out of mortification grew the desire of improvement; and the desire of amendment soon produced its effect. All the better qualities of her nature were now called into action by Mrs. Weston's judicious kindness. Frank, kind, and affectionate, at sixteen-;when Mabel Dacre was the constant comfort and companion of her grandfather-;feeling within herself at once the desire and capability of excellence; feeling, too, all the happiness both to itself and others which a well regulated disposition and a cultivated mind is capable of diffusing-;Mabel often said, laughing, "I used to call Mrs. Harcourt my evil, but I ought to have called her my good, genius."