ing away all her small possessions, for which
Lotta was distinguished. "Yes, you must, dear," she went on. "Mamma
gave it me last half; but I don't want it; I don't like it; in point of
fact, I have had it so long that I positively loathe it. And I know
it's a poor trumpery thing, though mamma gave two guineas for it; but
you know she is always imposed upon in shops. Do, do, do take it,
darling, just to oblige me. And now, tell me, dear,--you're going to
stop here for ever and ever, now you've come back" asked Charlotte,
after having thrust the gold pencil-case into Diana's unwilling hand.

"I don't know about for ever and ever, dear," Miss Paget replied
presently; "but I daresay I shall stay here till I'm tired of the place
and everybody about it. You won't be here very long, you know, Lotta;
for you'll be twenty next birthday, and I suppose you'll be leaving
school before you're twenty-one. Most of the girls leave at eighteen or
nineteen at latest; and you've been here so long, and are so much
farther advanced than others are. I am not going to be a pupil
again--that's out of the question; for I'm just twenty-two, as you
know. But Priscilla has been good enough to let me stay as a kind of
second teacher for the little ones. It will be dull work going through
the stupid abridgments of history and geography, and the scrappy bits
of botany and conchology, with those incorrigible little ones; but of
course I am very grateful to my cousin for giving me a home under any
conditions, after papa's dishonourable conduct. If it were not for her,
Lotta, I should have no home. What a happy girl you are, to have a
respectable man for your father!"

Charlotte's brow darkened a little as her friend said this.

"He is not my own father, you know," she said gravely, "and I should be
a great deal happier if mamma and I were alone in the world. We could
live in some dear little cottage on wide open downs near the sea, and I
could have a linsey habit, and a pony, and ride about all day, and read
and play to mamma at night. Of course Mr. Sheldon is very respectable,
and I daresay it's very wicked of me; but O, Diana, I think I should
like him better if he were not _quite_ so respectable. I saw your papa
once when he came to call, and I thought him nicer than my stepfather.
But then I'm such a frivolous creature, Di, and am always thinking what
I ought not to think."

* * * * *

Nearly a year had passed s