t myself a girl again, holding the
old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made
her my sister for those two happy years, and--Well, it is no use
paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there
was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young
namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of
companionship before you came on the scene. And to think what a
jewel I have missed all this time!

18.--I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have
to tell you. I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and
Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming
in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open
French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice--

"I tell you it was no joke. It's no use saying so," and I beheld
Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel. "I've looked on
at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken
out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my
sister I will speak out."

By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley's very
improper tone, and asking what was the matter. Isa sprang to me,
declaring that it was all Charley's absurd suspicion and
misconstruction. At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found
that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill
keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young
Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon
the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.

Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until
she could return it. Charley broke out. "As if I did not know
better than that! Didn't you make him give you that parasol and
promise him your photo? Ay, and give it him in return? You thought
he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like
a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun
over him. And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and
think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are
sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts.
I'm not strait-laced. I wouldn't mind having the photos of a
hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all
just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is--is--well--a regular old maid
about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on
purpose to