urting a child, and she
loved children--so much. She had always a vision of children at her
knee.

Silently Mrs. Crozier pushed the sheets towards her. Kitty read the page
with a strange, eager look in her eyes. "Yes, that's right as far as
it goes," she said. "It doesn't gush. It's natural. It's you as you are
now, not as you were then, of course."

Again Mona bent over the paper and wrote till she had completed a page.
Then Kitty looked over her shoulder and read what had been written. "No,
no, no, that won't do," she exclaimed. "That won't do at all. It isn't
in the way that will accomplish what we want. You've gone quite, quite
wrong. I'll do it. I'll dictate it to you. I know exactly what to say,
and we mustn't make any mistake. Write, please--you must."

Mona scratched out what had been written without a word. "I am waiting,"
she said submissively.

"All right. Now we go on. Write. I'll dictate." "'And look here,
dearest,'" she began, but Mona stopped her.

"We do not say 'look here' in England. I would have said 'and see.'"

"'And see-dearest,'" corrected Kitty, with an accent on the last word,
"'while I was mad at you for the moment for breaking your promise--'"

"In England we don't say 'mad' in that connection," Mona again
interrupted. "We say 'angry' or 'annoyed' or 'vexed.'" There was real
distress in her tone.

"Now I'll tell you what to do," said Kitty cheerfully. "I'll speak it,
and you write it my way of thinking, and then when we've finished you
will take out of the letter any words that are not pure, noble, classic
English. I know what you mean, and you are quite right. Mr. Crozier
never says 'look here' or 'mad,' and he speaks better than any one I
ever heard. Now, we certainly must get on."

After an instant she began again.

"--While I was angry at you a moment for breaking your promise, I cannot
reproach you for it, because I, too, bet on the Derby, but I bet on a
horse that you had said as much against as you could. I did it because
you had very bad luck all this year and lost, and also last year, and I
thought--"

For several minutes, with greater deliberation than was usual with her,
Kitty dictated, and at the end of the letter she said, "I am, dearest,
your--"

Here Mona sharply interrupted her. "If you don't mind I will say that
myself in my own way," she said, flushing.

"Oh, I forgot for the moment that I was speaking for you!" responded
Kitty, with a lurking, undermeaning i