ng these
Oxford girls, namely, that I should take out their convalescent
dressmaker as my maid instead of poor Amelie. She is quite well
now, and going back next week; but a few years in a warm climate
might be the saving of her health. So I agreed to go with Isa to
look at her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all
youthful enthusiasm. Edith went out driving with my mother, and we
began our TETE-A-TETE walk, in which I heard a great deal of the
difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often
Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper,
instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good-
natured mockery. The treatment may suit Mary's own daughters, but
'Just as you please, my dear,' is not good for sensitive, anxious
spirits. We passed Jane and Avice reading together under a rock; I
was much inclined to ask them to join us, but Isa was sure they were
much happier undisturbed, and she was so unwilling to share me with
any one that I let them alone. I was much pleased with the
dressmaker, Maude Harris, who is a nice, modest, refined girl, and
if the accounts I get from her employers bear out what I hear of
her, I shall engage her; I shall be glad, for the niece's sake, to
have that sort of young woman about the place. She speaks most
warmly of what the Misses Fulford have done for her.

Jane will be disappointed if I cannot have her rival candidate--a
pet schoolgirl who works under the Bourne Parva dressmaker. "What a
recommendation!" cries Pica, and there is a burst of mirth, at which
Jane looks round and says, "What is there to laugh at? Miss
Dadworthy is a real good woman, and a real old Bourne Parva person,
so that you may be quite sure Martha will have learnt no nonsense to
begin with."

"No," says Pica, "from all such pomps and vanities as style, she
will be quite clear."

While Avice's friendship goes as far as to say that if Aunt
Charlotte cannot have Maude, perhaps Martha could get a little more
training. Whereupon Jane runs off by the yard explanations of the
admirable training--religious, moral, and intellectual--of Bourne
Parva, illustrated by the best answers of her favourite scholars,
anecdotes of them, and the reports of the inspectors, religious and
secular; and Avice listens with patience, nay, with respectful
sympathy.

12.--We miss Mary and Martyn more than I expected. Careless and
easy-going as they seem, they made a diffe