uze, on which all your eyes are fixed,--now
there's a shame! Sophy Rich isn't looking a bit--this bow was on the
gown of Her Majesty Queen Anne yesterday morning! _Plaudite vobis_!"

And down came Miss Molly.

"If I might be excused, Mrs Maria," hesitatingly began Mr Edmundson,
who seemed almost afraid of the sound of his own voice, "_vobis_ is, as
I cannot but be sensible, not precisely the--ah--not quite the word--
ah--"

"You shut up, old Bandbox," said Molly, dropping her heroics. "None of
your business. Can't you but be sensible? First time you ever were!"

"I ask your pardon, Mrs Maria. I trust, indeed,--ah--I am not--ah--
insensible, to the many--ah--many things which--"

The youthful company were convulsed with laughter. They were all aware
that Molly was intentionally talking at cross purposes with her pastor;
and that while he clung to the old signification of sensible, namely, to
be aware of, or sensitive to, a thing, she was using it in the new, now
universally accepted, sense of sagacious. The fun, of course, was
enhanced by the fact that poor Mr Edmundson was totally unacquainted
with the change of meaning.

"I don't believe she cut it off a bit!" whispered Kitty Mainwaring.
"She gave a guinea to some orange-girl who was cousin to some other maid
in the Queen's laundry,--some stuff of that sort. Cut it off!--how
could she? Just tell me that."

Before the last word was well out of Kitty's lips, Molly's small, bright
scissors were snapped within an inch of Kitty's nose.

"Perhaps you would have the goodness to say that again, Mrs Catherine
Mainwaring!" observed that young person, in decidedly menacing tones.

"Thank you, no, I don't care to do," replied Kitty, laughing, but
shrinking back from the scissors.

"When I say I will do a thing, I will do it, Madam!" retorted Molly.

"If you can, I suppose," said Kitty, defending herself from another
threatening snap.

"Say I can't, at your peril!"

And Molly and her scissors marched away in dudgeon.

"You are very tired, I fear, Mrs Gatty," said Phoebe, when Gatty came
up to the room they shared, for the night.

"Rather," answered Gatty, with a sad smile on her white face.

But she did not tell Phoebe what had tired her. It was not the journey,
nor the ceremony, but her mother's greeting.

"Why, Betty, you are quite blooming!" Lady Delawarr had said. "It hath
done you good, child. And Molly, too, as sprightly as ever! Child, did