h had reached her ears. All
at once she noticed the paper on the table, and recognised it at once
as her Latin translation.

"So that was it," she soliloquised. "Poor girl, she isn't happy, I am
afraid. I wish we could be friends. Mab and I would soon manage to get
her into a more cheerful frame of mind. If she would only join the
Mission, she was the unintentional means of forming, she would find a
great deal more satisfaction in her life. However, she need not be
afraid of this," and she touched the pages of her work lovingly. "I
don't think I will send it after all."

The meeting, so strangely convened, was held as agreed, and was
numerously attended by those young ladies who lived within a convenient
distance. Many who did not, sent letters expressing regret for the same,
and sympathy for their object, some also sending subscriptions, and
offering any other kind of aid it might be in their power to bestow.

This was all very encouraging, and the girls in a flutter of delighted
excitement formed themselves into a society which was to be known to
future generations as the "Hollowmell Mission." There was a great deal
of laughing, and talking, and fun, many of them looking on it as a new,
and accordingly, agreeable source of amusement, but there was also a
great deal of simple, unaffected earnestness which kept the work alive
when these butterfly supporters, who hailed it as a new excitement,
wearied of it and one by one dropped off.

The company was divided into committees who presided over the different
branches of the work, and were, moreover, charged with the conduct of
the Saturday evening entertainments, over which each committee presided
in rotation, thus relieving Mabel and Minnie of a great deal of labour,
and leaving them free to apply themselves to the extension of the work.

Prizes of various descriptions were offered, the competition lists being
open to all. At first these were entirely in connection with work which
could be shown out-doors, as the girls did not consider themselves
warranted to go any further at present. The competition for the
best-kept garden has already been mentioned. Another was shortly
announced for the best-cleaned and tidiest windows. Many of the gates
and little wooden railings which separated the different plots of ground
were in very bad repair, the paint being in many cases completely rubbed
off, and the wood-work broken. At Minnie's request these places were
mended, and Mr