of six pinless brooches?"

At which Molly and Sylvia both laughed, though Molly blushed a little
too.

"I am really careful now, I do think," she said. "You know, dear
Auntie," she added in a lower voice, "Sylvia and I, more than ever,
_now_, try to do and be all that _she_ wished, in little as well as in
big things. Dear, dear grandmother!"

MY PINK PET

Chapter I

"For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather----."
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

IT is getting to be "a good while ago" since I was a little girl.
Sometimes this comes home to me quite distinctly: I feel that I am
really growing an old woman, but at other times I cannot believe it. I
have to get up and cross the room and look at myself in the mirror, and
see with my own eyes the gray hairs and the wrinkles in order to
convince myself that childhood, and maidenhood, and even middle age, are
all left far behind. At these times "now" appears the dream, "then" the
reality; and, strangely enough, this very feeling, I am told, is one of
the signs of real old age, of our nearing the land that at one time we
fancied so "very far off"--farther off, it seems to me, in middle age
than in early childhood, when it is easier for us to believe in what we
cannot see, when no clouds have come between us and the true sky beyond.

I have been in many countries, and lived many different lives, since I
was a little girl. I have been months together at sea, when dry land
itself seemed almost to become a dream. I have been for long years in
India, and grown so used to burning skies and swarthy faces that I could
hardly believe in the reality of cool England, with its fresh fields and
shady lanes; yet all these scenes are growing hazy, while clearly, and
yet more clearly, there rises before me the picture of my old, old home
and childish days, of special things that happened to me then, of little
pleasures and troubles which then seemed very great, and in one sense
really were so, no doubt, for they were great to _me_.

I will tell you about a trouble I once had, if you like. I am afraid you
will hardly count it a _story_, but still some among you may find it
interesting. For, after all, children are children even nowadays, when
so much more is done to make them clever and wise than was the case when
I was a little girl; and the feeling that your parents and grandparents
had their childish sorrows and