y eyes upward with eloquent sadness.

"Oh, dull! Dull does not express my feelings! We are so shut in here,
and so little happens, and I know nothing. I have had no chance of
learning and finding interests in that way."

"Why didn't ye study, then, when ye had the chance? Ye drove Miss
Minnitt crazy with your idleness!" interposed Pixie brutally; and
Esmeralda flushed and hesitated, momentarily discomfited, then,
recovering herself, cast a melancholy glance in Hilliard's face.

"Our old governess," she explained resignedly, in the tone of one who
might speak volumes, but is restrained from feelings of loyalty and
decorum. "A kind old creature, so good to us! She has lived in this
village all her life."

"I understand," said the model listener. It seemed to him quite natural
that this beautiful creature possessed an intellect to match her person,
and felt her eagle wings pinioned in the atmosphere of an Irish village.
He wished he were only more intellectual himself, so that he might be a
fitter companion, and devoutly hoped that he might make no bad slip to
betray his ignorance, and so alienate her sweet confidence. "As you
say, the more one knows, the less possible it should be to be dull or
idle. Amusement can never make up for good solid occupation."

"Oh, never, never!" cried Miss Esmeralda, with a fervour which brought
Pixie's eyes upon her in a flash of righteous indignation. Esmeralda to
talk like this! Esmeralda, who sat at ease while others worked, who
groaned aloud if asked to sew on a button, and was at once so dilatory
and so inefficient that Bridgie declared it was easier to do a task at
once than to unravel it after her vain attempts. Pixie gasped and
pranced on ahead, her back towards the direction in which she was going,
her face turned upon the culprit in kindling reproach.

"Joan O'Shaughnessy, what's happened to you to talk in such a fashion
this day? You, that doesn't know the meaning of work, to be sighing and
groaning that you haven't enough to do! You, to be saying that it would
cheer you to be busy, when ye sigh like a furnace and grumble the day
long if you have to work for an hour on end! I've heard ye say with my
own ears that if you had your own way, you would never do another hand's
turn, and of all the lazy, idle girls--"

"Wouldn't it perhaps be wise if you looked which way you were going?
The ground is rough, and I'm afraid you will have a fall," interposed
Hilliard