So "SUSPENSE."
father and mother argued that there was a perceptible difference
between Flora's air when she sat thus waiting for her master,
without any hope of seeing him, and her whole gait and
manner when she flung up her bent head triumphantly before
she made a bolt at the door or the open window, crying as
plainly as if she had made the remark in so many words-
" Ah! don't you know Master Harry is at the gate?" Either
expression was clear to Harry's father and mother, who had a
sympathy with the dog, and whose own dim eyes showed a
reflection of the aimless wistfulness which was creeping into
Flora's brighter orbs.
 A sore test was in store for all Harry's friends, human and
canine. In the course of honourable promotion he became a
person of importance, and his absences were much longer, his
returns briefer and less unfailing. At last there came a day
when he had the pride of showing a lieutenant's uniform; but
as a qualification to the satisfaction, where his friends were
concerned, he sailed for a distant station, from which he could
not return for a period of years.
 Slowly the days passed in the quiet parsonage, where the
snows of winter had gathered thickly on the old curate's head,
and he was seldom fit to totter up the stairs to his pulpit, and
where Mrs. Bloomfield had at last to avail herself of spectacles;
and to own to a touch of rheumatism, so that she had to
employ young deputies to do the entire decorations of the
church at Christmas, and even to teach in the Sunday school,
and undertake, under the old lady's superintendence, her
district visiting. Flora herself, by far the youngest of the
household, was neither so young nor so active as she had been.
 But whatever powers of seeing, hearing, and discharging