Celia's Moth.

This time it was into Eory ' s dark face that the blood ( lew , and he bit his lip . C ' eb ' a ' s word had stung deeper than she knew , or meant , perhaps . "What would you have me do ? " he said at last .

" Anything ! " answered Celia , energetically . "Get a hammer and break stones on the road would be better than nothing . " "But why should I work , since my father left me enough—" " Why should you work 1 " interrupted

Celia . "Why , for the sake of working . Yes , I know—more ' s the pity ; your father did leave you just enough to dawdle along . Yes , you do dawdle , Eory—no use scowling- like that ; what else can you call the way you ' ve spent j ^ our time ever since

you came home' ? When it ' s rainy , you dawdle off with a fishing-rod ; and , when it ' s pleasant , you dawdle under the trees with a book all day long ; and then in the evening—" "In the evening I dawdle round the

candle , " completed Eory , sarcastically . "Yes , exactly ; and I can tell you , Eory , the candle doesn ' t like , it !" "Doesn ' t it ? " said Eory , getting up . " Well , good-night , then , candle ; I won't dawdle round you any more this evening , anyhow ! " With this speech ho took his

six feet of laziness out of the room . Celia stopped the click of her needles , and listened for his tread on the stairs . She did not hear it , but what she did hear next minute was the outside door closing with a bang that indicated Master Rory to be in

no very gentle mood . A smile and then a little frown came over Colia ' s face . "Where is he off to now , I wonder ?" she said to herself , not condescending , however , to go to the window and see what direction the truant was taking .

" To Susy Tibbets ' , perhaps ; he has done that once or twice before when I put him out—and he was put out to-ni ght ! Well , I can't help it ; I can't see him running to waste so , and hold my tongue . If he chooses to revenge himself by going to Tibbets

Susy ' , why , he must , that ' s all ? I suppose lie won't expect me to sit up for him ; lie knows there ' s the pantry-window for folks that stay out lata courting . " But Eory had not gone to Susy Tibbets ' , albeit certain of being suffered there to hover round the candle as long and close as he liked . He had gone down to the

mill-stream , to a mossy stone whore he had been wont , as Celia said , to dawdle with a fishing-rod ; but there was no fishing-rod in his hand now , and no dawdling in his mood either . That word " shirk "

was still rankling within him : it was not by any means the first time that Celia had scolded him for being lazy , but that epithet somehow seemed to point and drive homo the reproach in quite a new way . Eory was lazy , there is no denying that . Yon saw it in the languid grace of his

well-developed figure ; in the peculiar curve of his lips ; in the very way in which the heavy lids rose slowly from his eyes , as if it wore hardly worth the trouble ; in motion and outline , as in colouring , the Southern mother was betrayed in him .

Yet , underlying all the tropical warmth and softness , was the firmer stratum that came from his New-England ancestry on the other side ; and , just as you wore surprised , when the black lashes were lifted , to see a pair of deep-blue eyes set in

the olive face , so you were surprised sometimes to see those large , sleepy eyes kindle into a keenness of comprehension and energy foreign to his whole exterior . To repeat , the rock lay under all , only it lay so deep that it was seldom touched . But it had been touched to-night . He had left

Celia in one of those flashes of anger not at all unusual with him ; but he seated himself now on the stone by the mill-brook , with an uncommonly well-defined purpose of thinking it all out : " it" being Celia , himself , and his own position with regard to her and things in general .

What that was does not require many words to explain . Eory—and here it may be remarked that he did not owe his Irish name to any Irish blood , but to the inability of one of his father ' s farm-hands to—as he p hrased it—get his tongue lound

the little fellow's name . For Captain Trent , with that peculiar taste in nomenclature not infrequently to be-observed in the New-Englander born and bred , had called his boy Eosario , after the South-American settlement , where he hart met

his wife ; and , this appellation being unmanageable to more tongues than Pat McGinnis ' , that worthy ' s solution of the difficulty had been speedily adopted by everybody . Eory Trent , then , w . s the orphan son of a South American Spaniard and a roving New-Englander , who had