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swinging in a low rocker, and looking so pretty that I was quite proud of her as an ornament to our front veranda. "I dunno," she said, "unless it was the exercise for sitting perfectly still on a row of chairs. A nun goes behind us and drops a big book or something, and any girl that jumps gets a bad mark." "Capital!" I cried; "no wonder you have learned repose of manner." Thus encouraged, the girl continued: "Then we have little parties and receptions, and we have to converse with the nuns and with each other, and anybody that mentions one of the three D's gets a bad mark." "The three D's?" "Yes, sir--Dress, Disease, and Domestics." "Hear this, Belle," I said, laughing, as my wife took the rocking chair on the other side of me; "fancy any collection of women being obliged to steer clear of the three D's!" "You should ask Mary about her studies," was the severe reply. "We were much pleased with your letters." "Yes, mawm; Sister Stella was always very good about that; helped me with the big words, and often wrote the whole thing out for me. Sometimes I had to copy it two or three times before I could please her." Belle hastily changed the subject. "Let Mr. Gemmell hear that piece you recited to me this morning." I am no judge of elocution, but the general effect of the young girl standing there in the arch of the veranda, a clematis-wreathed post on either side, and her face, with its delicate coloring, turned toward the golden twilight, was pleasing in the extreme. "She'll maybe be famous some day," said Belle, when Mary had discreetly retired. "She is far quicker at learning verses off by heart than she is at reading them." "Still, to be a successful elocutionist nowadays one has to be thoroughly well educated, and Mary is too late in beginning." "You can't tell. She's got the appearance, and that's half the battle." "With us, perhaps; but remember, we are not capable critics, even though one of us is a Theosophist." "Laugh as you like, Dave. Theosophy satisfies me, because it explains some things in my own nature that I never could understand before." "It may be that you are too soon satisfied. That's the way with all new movements--one story is good till another is told. Your great-granddaughter will smile at the credulity of your ideas on this very subject." "She can smile, and so can you. We don't pretend to know everything; we only hope that we are on the right road to le
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