ears— and her nose too, so the mischievous girls
said— to hang: jewelled rings in, had not that
surgical operation been expressly inhibited by
the scholastic home government. Debarred
from the exercise of this decorative Orientalism,
it was Miss Dallwallah's chief delight to curl, to
brush out, and to curl again, in all sorts of
ringlets, tapers, sausages, and corkscrews, Lily's
soft brown locks. The child's hair curled
naturally, and wanted neither tissue paper nor
irons; but Miss Dallwallah was continually
improving on nature, and nothing seemed more
to delight her than when Lily's hair, after half
an hour's elaborate frizzing, or compression
under the influence of caloric, assumed the
appearance of a highly ornate mop. The child
submitted, and was pleased. Once, only, she
gave way to a short howl, when Miss Dallwallah
inadvertently touched the tip of her ear with the
hot tongs, but in general she regarded the
philo-comic ordeal as a rare game and sport.
However, one day, she thought fit to remonstrate
against that which was decidedly a work of
supererogation.

"My hair curl with water, Missa Lally," she
said, looking up into the hairdresser's face with
her large blue eyes.

"What a great stupid I am! Of course it
will," exclaimed the impetuous Indian (whose
petit nom, among her familiars, was "Lally").
"There, I've half spoilt your hair with these
nasty hot irons. It'll curl all the wrong way
now, of course. It's just like me. I never can
do anything properly. I wonder I haven't bitten
you into the bargain." And Miss Dallwallah,
who was of an impulsive, and not a very strong-minded
temperament, and who bitterly remembered
her dental escapade with Miss Libscombe,
would have taken refuge in tears, had she not
been consoled and assured that no harm was
done, by Miss Tallboys and Miss Thrupp.

It was a merry time. The "great girls"
dressed Lily, and put her to bed. Had she
been a squirrel, or a marmoset monkey, they
could not have made more of her. As yet, the
child had been deemed too small to go to church,
and the homilies of the dean, before breakfast
and bedtime, had been thought sufficient
theological food for her; but the "great girls"
begged so hard that she might be allowed to
accompany them, that at last the authorities
acceded to the request. To walk to church on
Sunday mornings hand in hand with one or the
other of her three protectresses, was to Lily the
source of enormous pride and gratification. She
was very good in church, although she sometimes
swung her small legs— which did not reach
to within a foot of the ground— in a manner to
endanger the stability of neighbouring hassocks;
and once or twice, on hot summer Sundays, she
went to sleep, and would have tumbled off, but
that Miss Tallboys caught her. But, take her for
all in all, she was a most devout congregationist,
and it was very pleasant to behold her gazing
with a rapt wistfulness at the clergyman in the
pulpit, and with interest not much less at the
clerk in his desk; or nodding her head smilingly
to the Psalms (I am dreadfully afraid that she
manifested a desire to dance to the Thirty-third),
or sitting with a very big prayer-book, of which
she could not read one line, open and clutched in
her hands.

MORE TRIFLES FROM CEYLON.

IT is the general and correct opinion that
snakes will not, as a rule, attack people except
in self-defence. The following anecdote would
at first seem to negative this belief, but I am
inclined to think that the unusual and highly
objectionable line of conduct pursued by the
snake in question, is to be attributed to its
having its nest somewhere in the neighbourhood.

An Eurasian sub-collector of customs was one
afternoon sitting smoking his pipe, when he saw
the head of a snake near the door of the room.
Thinking that it was a rat-snake— a harmless
animal which feeds on rats, frogs, and other
small animals, and does a great deal of good
in that way about a house— he contented himself
with tapping against the door with a slight
switch that was at hand; the snake thereupon
moved off, but shortly afterwards the sub-collector
again saw its head peering through a fence
near the door; so he took up something and
threw it in the direction of the animal, still
thinking it was only a rat-snake. Instantly the
snake, large and very irate, came towards him,
hissing, or, as he described it, purring "like a
cat." Finding his escape by the door cut off,
the terrified man got into a corner behind a box,
and dodged to this side and to that: the snake
constantly striking out at him, but always foiled
by not being able to strike over the box. The
sub-collector kept hitting at the snake with his
switch; but, as it was a slight one, this only
exasperated the snake, and induced it to redouble
its efforts. At length, a fortunate blow from the
switch on the snake's head stunned it. The
sub-collector did not remain to ascertain how long
the state of coma lasted, but rushed out of the
doorway to the sea-shore, where he found some
fishermen, who accompanied him with sticks in
search of his formidable foe. But he was gone,
and all efforts to find him proved unsuccessful.

The circumstances had not been favourable
to a minute zoological examination, but the
sub-collector was of opinion that the snake
was a polonga, an exceedingly venomous
reptile. As before said, it had most probably
a nest somewhere in the wall or ground, and
thought its young were in danger. While
clearing a guinea-grass plantation in my
garden some weeks ago, the workmen killed one
of these snakes: I was rather surprised by their
doing so, for Buddhists are forbidden to take life
of any kind; and although this precept is not
very generally adhered to, the Singhalese show
special reverence for some kinds of snakes. The
cobra is particularly sacred, because he is
believed to have shaded the head of Buddha from