WHAT MUST BE MUST.

CHAPTER I.

"I AM afraid you will educate Mary to death, my dear," said Mr. Austin to his wife, in reply to a long detail of her plans for the perfecting of this her only daughter. "Too much education is as bad as too little."

"Too much education, Mr. Austin! who ever heard of such a thing? Everybody is complaining of the want of education among us, and you, yourself, I am sure, often criticise young ladies, and say they are miserably educated. But you are the strangest man! Haven't I always kept Mary under my own eye, and had masters and governesses for her, instead of sending her to a fashionable school, where she would have learned frivolity and nonsense, and given up society that I might never lose sight of her for a moment? Haven't I watched even her mantua-maker, and forbidden her to describe the finery of other customers, and bought Mary's bonnets myself, without even letting her try them on, lest she should become vain? I am sure I don't know what more a mother could do for a child- ""

"You forget, my dear," said Mr. Austin, quietly, "that I warned you against doing too much, not too little. My fears point rather toward Mary's becoming a mere automaton, for want of the habit of thinking and acting for herself, than to any deficiency in the list of her accomplishments. Mary is seventeen now, and might be trusted, I think, to her own judgment sometimes. But you know, I never interfere, my dear," Mr. Austin concluded, as he saw a look of deep dejection settling on the face of his wife. "I dare say you know best, but I thought I would make the suggestion." And the good husband took his hat and gloves and went off to his office, rather sorry that he should have said a word which might grieve or discourage the most anxious and self-devoted of mothers, even for the benefit of the most precious of daughters.

Mrs. Austin, on her part, was made irremediably miserable for the whole day. If she had a hobby, it was the education of Mary. She had been a theorist on the subject of education before she possessed a daughter on whom to practice; and when she had one, she began on the most profound principles laid down in her favorite books before the child was a month old. It proved no easy matter to adhere closely to rules, for, to her surprise, she found many cases not provided for in any of the books; but she did what she could. When she could not follow Mrs. Hamilton, she tried to find a precedent in Rousseau, and when Mrs. Child failed her, she sought instruction in Mrs. Chapone, or Locke, or Hannah More, or Dr. Gregory, or some one of the good ladies who have given tous of advice to the wives, mothers, grand-mothers and cousins of England and America. And now to meet an implied censure! and from her husband, who had always approved of all she did,

and contrasted Mary and her accomplishments with universal girldom, so exultingly! It was too much for her philosophy.

"Mother," said Mary, entering at the moment when all this and much more had come full upon the unhappy parent; "Mother! shall I wear my new dress to-day?"

"Wear whatever you like, Mary," said Mrs. Austin, determined to begin at once to give Mary up to her own control, a sort of despair nerving her for the sacrifice of her cherished supervision.

Mary looked at her mother, scarcely trusting her ears. She observed the cloud, and added, "Perhaps, mamma, you would rather I should wear something else?"

"No, my dear," was the sad-toned reply. And Mary withdrew in a complete puzzle, not knowing what to do in so trying an emergency. She stood balancing between the new dress she longed to wear, and the old one she more than half suspected her mother wished her to put on, in a most painful uncertainty. The new one was taken up and laid down a half dozen times, and the old one glanced at as often; the time for dressing almost elapsed, and the first master's hour was on the point of striking, and still Mary dutifully balanced. What a relief was the sound of her mother's voice at the door.

"Mary, I think as the walking is very bad, and you are going out, perhaps you had better reserve your new dress for another day, but you can do just as you like." And both were pleased the mother to think she had not controlled Mary, and the daughter that she was saved the new trouble of deciding for herself.

CHAPTER II.

WAS Mary always so submissive? She endeavored to be so, for she was a good girl; but she did not invariably succeed, for she had been endowed by nature with a mind and heart, and such things are apt to assert their rights in spite of education. Habit has a wonderful influence, and makes things easy which would else be intolerable. Mary had never known freedom of any kind. She had always been surrounded with tender restraints, as if by a netting of strong wires, gilded, but impassable. Young companions had been selected for her, brought in with a formal introduction and a command, implied at least, to love and cherish; but these expedients turned out, as such things always must, complete failures, and Mary preferred her books, her music, her flowers and her needle-work, to such unnatural associations. So she grew up a perfect child, without any of those precocious initiations into the ways of the world which are so apt to be the consequence of unlimited acquaintance. She read many books, but they were either books of direct instruction, conned at the rate of a certain number of pages per day, or they were full of erasures, leaves pasted together, and notes of qualification or dissent, the work of the mother who had determined to be taste, conscience, and judgment to her daughter, until such time as she should have arrived at years of discretion. When this important period was likely to arrive it was not easy to say. At seventeen it was certainly as far off as ever.

But this hint from Mr. Austin, this cruel blow from a quarter

whence it was least anticipated, this flash of unwelcome light, which suggested nothing but darkness, changed the whole current of Mrs. Austin's life and Mary's. Such things come upon us with double power when they give force and form to suspicions which we have before entertained but would not acknowledge. An unpleasant sense of Mary's lack of individuality had often, within a year or two, suggested itself to Mrs. Austin, but she had crushed down the unwelcome thought, as a heresy against the true theory of education. That was past now, ́and her vexation was proportioned to the dissolution of a lifelong dream. Mary must act for herself; and in coming to this resolution, her mother felt very much as she would have done if cruel necessity had obliged her to throw her darling overboard at sea, to take her chance on a single plank.

CHAPTER III.

MARY had never walked out alone in her life; but the time had now come when she must brave the dangers of the streets. Her mother desired her to go down to Stewart's, but fortified her with many directions and cautions, as to keeping on the right side of the street, and looking on all sides before crossing.

She was rather pleased with the novelty, and performed her errand very well, though with somewhat of the timid and suspicious air of a deaf and dumb person, who walks in the crowd but not of it. On her return, a beautiful large dog attracted her attention as she was crossing the street, and the next in