are those wonderful musical novels
Uncle George gave me to read last summer, 'Charles Auchester' and
'Counterparts,' they are full of Jews and their genius--"

"Laura, Laura, there is no need of your talking like this," interrupted
her father; "we are not going to deny the worth or respectability of
your new acquaintances, but it is entirely unnecessary for you to rush
into any intimacy with such strangers."

There was a look in her father's face, as he spoke, that told Laura very
plainly that all she had said had done more harm than good, and that
henceforth there would be no more "sunset teas" with Esther Bodn. All
her little plans, too, for making Esther's life brighter, by welcoming
her into her own home, and bringing her into a better acquaintance with
the other girls, were rendered impossible now. But if she could not be
good to her in this way, she would be more than ever kind and cordial to
her at school, and she would try to enlist Kitty Grant's interest. She
would tell Kitty about that pretty refined home, and ask her to be kind
and cordial too; and she was sure that Kitty would not refuse, for, in
spite of her fun and her worldliness, Kitty had really a kind heart.
Yes, she would enlist Kitty, and Kitty was all powerful. If she once got
interested in a person, she could make everybody else interested. But,
alas, for this scheme!

CHAPTER III.

Alas! because Kitty had already taken her stand on the other side. She
had already told the girls that Esther Bodn lived on McVane Street, in
near neighborhood to a lot of rum-shops and foreigners, and had then
"made fun," in the same rattling way that she had used with Laura,
airing all her little suspicions and suggestions about the name of Bodn,
in the half-frolic fashion that always had such effect upon the
listeners. It had such effect on this occasion, that Laura found that
every girl had passed from indifference to an active prejudice against
Esther. Kitty herself had not meant to produce this result. Indeed,
Kitty had had no meaning whatever but that of amusing herself,--"making
fun;" and when the girls, relishing this "fun," laughed and applauded,
she did not realize that she had done a mischievous thing. Poor Laura,
however, realized everything as the days went by, and she saw Esther
subjected to a certain critical observation. Her only hope was that the
person most interested did not notice this; but one day she came upon
Esther at recess, bending