--but that we have not come to yet;
they were more eloquent than her tongue, for she was neither witty nor
wise, only rich in the exuberant life of seventeen, and as expectant of
good will and innocent of knowledge of the world as a retriever puppy.

Apparently, Miss Bluebell was not in the suavest of humours, for she
flung her hat on to one crazy chair, and herself on another, with a
vehemence that caused a sensible concussion.

"My dear, how brusque you are," said Mrs. Leigh, plaintively.

"So provoking," muttered Bluebell.

"What's gone wrong with the child now?" said Miss Opie, the elder
proprietress of the domicile.

"Why," said Bluebell, "I met the Rollestons, and they asked: me to their
picnic at the Humber on Friday; but how _can_ I go? Look here!" and she
pointed to a pair of boots evidently requiring patching. "Oh, mother!
could you manage another pair now? Miss Scrag has sent home my new
'waist,' and I can do up my hat, but these buckets are only fit for the
dusthole."

Mrs. Leigh sighed,--"A new pair, with side-springs, would cost three
dollars. No, Bluebell, I can't indeed."

"I might as well be a nun, then, at once," said the girl, with tears in
her voice; and a sympathetic dew rose in Mrs. Leigh's weary eyes at the
disappointment she could not avert from her spoiled darling.

"Bluebell," said Miss Opie, "if you read more and scampered about less,
your mind would be better fortified to bear these little reverses."

"Shut up!" muttered Bluebell, in the artless vernacular of a school-girl,
half turning her shoulder with an impatient gesture.

The entrance of the tea-things created a diversion, but the discontented
girl sat apart, while the hideousness of her surroundings came upon her
as a new revelation. Certainly, in Canada, in a poverty-stricken abode,
taste seems more completely starved than in any other country.

Bluebell, in her critical mood, noted the ugly delf tea-things, so badly
arranged; the black stove, four feet into the room, with its pipe running
through a hole in the wall; the ricketty horsehair chairs and wire blind
for the window, "gave" on the street, where gasping geese were diving in
the gutters for the nearest approach to water they could find.

Scarcely less repugnant were the many-coloured crotchet-mats and
anti-macassars with which Miss Opie loved to decorate the apartment; nor
was a paper frill adorning a paltry green flower-vase wanting to complete
the tasteless _tout