mind. Wherever her
parents went she went, as a matter of course. So it had always been, and
so without doubt it always would be. She did not care specially about
going to California at this season of the year,--in fact she had told
her bosom friend, Madge Everton, only the day before, that it was
"rather a bore," and that she should have preferred to go to Newport.
"But what would you?" she added, with the slightest shrug of her pretty
shoulders. "Papa and mamma really must go, it appears; so of course I
must go too."

"A bore!" repeated Madge energetically, replying to the first part of
her friend's remarks. "Hilda, what a _very_ singular girl you are! Here
I, or Nelly, or _any_ of the other girls would give both our ears, and
our front teeth too, to make such a trip; and just because you _can_ go,
you sit there and call it 'a bore!'" And Madge shook her black curls,
and opened wide eyes of indignation and wonder at our ungrateful
heroine. "I only wish," she added, "that you and I could be changed into
each other, just for this summer."

"I wish--" began Hilda; but she checked herself in her response to the
wish, as the thought of Madge's five brothers rose in her mind (Hilda
could not endure boys!), looked attentively at the toe of her little
bronze slipper for a few moments, and then changed the subject by
proposing a walk. "Console yourself with the caramels, my fiery Madge,"
she said, pushing the box across the table, "while I put on my boots. We
will go to Maillard's and get some more while we are out. His caramels
are decidedly better than Huyler's; don't you think so!"

A very busy woman was pretty Mrs. Graham during the next two weeks.
First she made an expedition into the country "to see an old friend,"
she said, and was gone two whole days. And after that she was out every
morning, driving hither and thither, from shop to dressmaker, from
dressmaker to milliner, from milliner to shoemaker.

"It is a sad thing," Mr. Graham would say, when his wife fluttered in
to lunch, breathless and exhausted and half an hour late (she, the most
punctual of women!),--"it is a sad thing to have married a comet by
mistake, thinking it was a woman. How did you find the other planets
this morning, my dear? Is it true that Saturn has lost one of his rings?
and has the Sun recovered from his last attack of spots? I really fear,"
he would add, turning to Hilda, "that this preternatural activity in
your comet-parent portends som