rence in the ways of the
young people; they were always about with them, not as dragons, but
for their own pleasure. The presence of a professor must needs
impose upon young men, and Mary, with her brilliant wit and charming
manners, was a check without knowing it. The boating party came
back gay and triumphant, and the young men joined in our late meal;
and oh, what a noise there was! though I must confess that it was
not they who made the most. Metelill was not guilty of the noise,
but she was--I fear I must say it--flirting with all her might with
a youth on each side of her, and teasing a third; I am afraid she is
one of those girls who are charming to all, and doubly charming to
your sex, and that it will never do to have her among the staff. I
don't think it is old-maidish in us to be scandalised at her walking
up and down the esplanade with young Horne till ten o'clock last
night; Charley was behind with Bertie Elwood, and, I grieve to say,
was smoking. It lasted till Horace Druce went out to tell them that
Metelill must come in at once, as it was time to shut up the house.

The Oxford girls were safe indoors; Isa working chess problems with
another of the lads, Avice keeping Jane company over the putting the
little ones to sleep--in Mount Lebanon, as they call the Druce
lodging--and Pica preserving microscopic objects. "Isn't she
awful?" said one of those pupils. "She's worse than all the dons in
Cambridge. She wants to be at it all day long, and all through the
vacation."

They perfectly flee from her. They say she is always whipping out a
microscope and lecturing upon protoplasms--and there is some truth
in the accusation. She is almost as bad on the emancipation of
women, on which there is a standing battle, in earnest with Jane--in
joke with Metelill; but it has, by special orders, to be hushed at
dinner, because it almost terrifies grandmamma. I fear Pica tries
to despise her!

This morning the girls are all out on the beach in pairs and threes,
the pupils being all happily shut up with their tutor. I see the
invalid lady creep out with her beach-rest from the intermediate
house, and come down to her usual morning station in the shade of a
rock, unaware, poor thing, that it has been monopolised by Isa and
Metelill. Oh, girls! why don't you get up and make room for her?
No; she moves on to the next shady place, but there Pica has a
perfect fortification of books spread on her rug, and Charle