ed--

'Of course, you know, aunt has always been nasty to me, ever since I said
ma said I was not strong enough to be bothered with that horrid school;
and as to poor Herbert, they have spited him because he shot that--'

'Shut up, Ida,' shouted Herbert. 'I wouldn't go with them if they went
down on their knees to me! What should I do, loafing about among a lot
of disputing frog-eaters, without a word of a Christian language, and old
Frank with his nose in a guide-book wanting me to look at beastly
pictures and rum old cathedrals. You would be a fish out of water, too,
Ida. Now Conny will take to it like a house afire, and what's more, she
deserves it!'

'Well, ma,' put in the provoked Ida, 'I wonder you let Conny go, when it
would do me so much good, and it is so unfair.'

'My dear, you don't understand a mother's feelings. I feel the slight
for you, but your uncle must be allowed to have his way. He is at all
the expense, and to refuse for Conny would do you no good.'

'Except that she will be more set up than ever,' murmured Ida.

'Oh, come now! I wonder which looks more like the set-up one,' said
Herbert, whose wider range had resulted in making him much alive to Ida's
shortcomings, and who looked on at her noisy style of flirtation with the
eye of a grave censor. Whatever he might be himself, he knew what a
young lady ought to be.

He triumphed a little when, during the few days spent in London,
Constance wrote of a delightful evening when, while her uncle and aunt
and Miss Morton had gone to an entertainment for Bertha's match-box
makers, she had been permitted to have Rose Rollstone to spend the time
with her, the carriage, by their kind contrivance, fetching the girl both
in going and coming.

The two young things had been thoroughly happy together. Rose had gone
on improving herself; her companions in the art embroidery line were
girls of a good class, with a few ladies among them, and their tone was
good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the classes,
Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously
attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting
companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared
notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in
playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton's _protegee_
had been softened. She was a very pretty little creature, with big blue
eye