most melancholy,"

come in to tea, so please your highness.'

'What can you mean?' said Helen; 'I am sure I am not melancholy.'

'I am sure you shun the noise of folly,' said Elizabeth.

'I am sorry you consider all our merriment as folly,' said Anne, hoping
to save Helen.

'Indeed I do not,' said Elizabeth; 'it was no more folly than a
kitten's play, and quite as much in the natural course of things.'

'Helen's occupation being out of the natural course of things,' said
Anne, 'I should think she was better employed than we were.'

'In making a noise,' said Elizabeth; 'so were we, I do not see much
difference.'

'O Lizzie, it was not the same thing!' said Helen, exceedingly
mortified at being laughed at for what she considered as a heroic piece
of self-denial, and so it was, though perhaps not so great in her as it
would have been in one who was less musical, and more addicted to the
noise of folly.

'How touchy Helen is this evening!' thought Elizabeth; 'I had better
let her alone, both for her sake and my own.'

'How foolish I was to interfere!' thought Anne; 'it was the most
awkward thing I ever did; I only roused the spirit of contradiction,
and did Helen more harm than good; I never will meddle between sisters
again.'

Presently after, Elizabeth asked Harriet Hazleby whether she had ever
been at Winchester.

'Yes,' was the answer, 'and a duller place I would not wish to see.'

'It is a handsome old town, is it not?' inquired Anne, turning to Lucy;
but Harriet caught up the word, and exclaimed, 'Handsome, indeed! I do
not think there is one tolerable new looking street in the whole place,
except one or two houses just up by the railroad station.'

Anne still looked towards Lucy, as if awaiting her answer; Lucy
replied, 'The Cathedral and College and the old gateways are very
beautiful, but there are not so many old looking houses as you would
expect.'

'It must be badly off indeed,' said Elizabeth, 'if it has neither old
houses nor new; but I wanted to know whether William Rufus' monument is
in a tolerable state of preservation.'

'Oh! the monuments are very grand indeed,' said Harriet; 'everyone
admired them. There are the heads of some of the old kings most
beautifully painted, put away in a dark corner. They are very curious
things indeed; I wonder they do not bring them out.'

'Those are the heads of the Stuart kings,' whispered Lucy.

'Why, Harriet,' exclaimed Dora, 'William Rufus was