ring bean up the front, and a bit of garden, full
of snap-dragons, before it.

We shall be here a week or so yet, at any rate, and then, I think, we
shall go straight home, Dick has lost so much time already.

With a great deal of love,

Your Kitty.

VII.

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM.

With the two young people whose days now lapsed away together, it could
not be said that Monday varied much from Tuesday, or ten o'clock from
half past three; they were not always certain what day of the week it
was, and sometimes they fancied that a thing which happened in the
morning had taken place yesterday afternoon.

But whatever it was, and however uncertain in time and character their
slight adventure was to themselves, Mrs. Ellison secured all possible
knowledge of it from Kitty. Since it was her misfortune that promoted
it, she considered herself a martyr to Kitty's acquaintance with Mr.
Arbuton, and believed that she had the best claim to any gossip that
could come of it. She lounged upon her sofa, and listened with a
patience superior to the maiden caprice with which her inquisition was
sometimes met; for if that delayed her satisfaction it also employed her
arts, and the final triumph of getting everything out of Kitty afforded
her a delicate self-flattery. But commonly the young girl was ready
enough to speak, for she was glad to have the light of a worldlier mind
and a greater experience than her own on Mr. Arbuton's character: if
Mrs. Ellison was not the wisest head, still talking him over was at
least a relief from thinking him over; and then, at the end of the ends,
when were ever two women averse to talk of a man?

She commonly sought Fanny's sofa when she returned from her rambles
through the city, and gave a sufficiently strict account of what had
happened. This was done light-heartedly and with touches of burlesque
and extravagance at first; but the reports grew presently to have a more
serious tone, and latterly Kitty had been so absent at times that she
would fall into a puzzled silence in the midst of her narration; or else
she would meet a long procession of skilfully marshalled questions with
a flippancy that no one but a martyr could have suffered. But Mrs.
Ellison bore all and would have borne much more in that cause. Battled
at one point, she turned to another, and the sum of her researches was
often a clearer perception of Kitty's state of mind than the young girl
herself possess