ing them in a rapid dash by all sorts of good luck favouring everything I do—handsome, witty, agreeable, the star of society, and the choice of some lovely heroine—and to forget that. I am plain Allan Lindsay of Branxholm, that I have to plough to-morrow, and to sow next month, to prune the vines, and graft the new trees, and to go to Gundabook to lend a hand to Jamie in his busy season, before my own comes on, and to take out the reaping machine next December for the crop that has taken months to grow; everything done laboriously, and the reward following not very close on the exertion."
"But Allan, you do your work, and what matter is it that while you are reading your book, you forget sometimes where you are, and what you have got to do?" said Amy.
"I don't put so much heart in the work. I do," said Allan. "I don't feel as if it was of so much consequence."
"Well," said Isabel, "I like to be the heroine in imagination. I like to fancy myself as beautiful and as amiable, and as clever as she is; I like going through all the adventures and escaping all the dangers, and being married to the hero at last, in spite of all obstacles. Don't you like -it too, Amy?"
"Allan says what mamma used to say to me,
