126 "CHIN:"   THE STORY OF A TAME CHINCHILLA.

for their possession. The very thought of skulls had given her a shiver, bicycles, never could by any possibility be anything to her; and she was too far behind the age in which she lived, to have given 1100/. for a cracked jug (if she had had the money, which she had not); so that even old china, with all its power and potency in the manufacture of maniacs, found no response in her: but what was this ?

" A set of Chinchilla "—" cost twenty-five pounds "— and "nearly as good as new." And "wanted a Spaniel with very long ears," and, jewellery, and especially gold filigree!

She fixed her spectacles more firmly upon her Roman nose, read it again and again, and then leaned back in a

reverie.

******

Chinchilla had been one of her life-long dreams. As a child she had sat every Sunday in winter, through many a year behind a long and capacious cape and muff, of the gigantic proportions our grandmothers carried before them, and evermore she had been haunted by the hopo of Chinchilla. But in the manifold disappointments of a lifetime, that hope had ever been getting fainter, and she had long ago resigned herself to the belief, that having arrived at sixty years of age, fate could have destined her to nothing nearer her dream of beauteous furs, than her old squirrel-lined cloak. But now, all was within her reach. Again she read, and this time aloud :  " A Spaniel with very long ears,