and a pair of her cast-off yellow
gaiters. These garments I strung together and prepared to look
life-like, as nearly as a stuffing of hay would meet the inner
requirements of the case. I them seated the dread apparition in the
fork of a limb, and awaited results. The first thief was an old
jay, who flew towards the tree with his head turned to one side
to see whether any one was overtaking him. But scarcely had he
alighted when he uttered a scream of horror that was sickening to
hear, and dropped on the grass beneath, after which he took himself
off with a silence and speed that would have done credit to a
passenger-pigeon. That tree was rather avoided for some days, or
it may have been let alone merely because others were ripening; so
that Mrs. Cobb got her cherries, and I sent Mrs. Walter some also
for the excellent loan of her veil and gaiters.

As the days pass I fall in love with Sylvia, who has been persuaded
to turn my arbor into a reading-room, and is often to be found
there of mornings with one of Sir Walter's novels. Sometimes I
leave her alone, sometimes lie on the bench facing her, while she
reads aloud, or, tiring, prattles. Little half-fledged spirit, to
whom the yard is the earth and June eternity, but who peeps over
the edge of the nest at the chivalry of the ages, and fancies that
she knows the world. The other day, as we were talking, she tapped
the edge of her _Ivanhoe_ with a slate-pencil--for she is also
studying the Greatest Common Divisor--and said, warningly, "You
must not make epigrams; for if you succeeded you would be brilliant,
and everything brilliant is tiresome."

"Who is your authority for _that_ epigram, Miss Sylvia?" I said,
laughing.

"Don't you suppose that I have any ideas but what I get from books?"

"You may have all wisdom, but those sayings proceed only from
experience."

"I have my intuitions; they are better than experience."

"If you keep on, _you_ will be making epigrams presently, and then
I shall find you tiresome, and go away."

"You couldn't. I am your guest. How unconventional I am to come
over and sit in your arbor! But it is Georgiana's fault."

"Did _she_ tell you to come?"

"No; but she didn't keep me from coming. Whenever any one
of us does anything improper we always say to each other, 'It's
Georgiana's fault. She ought not to have taught us to be so simple
and unconventional.'"

"And is she the family governess?"

"She governs the