family. There doesn't seem to be any real
government, but we all do as she says. You might think at first
that Georgiana was the most light-headed member of the family, but
she isn't. She's deep. I'm shallow in comparison with her. She
calls me sophisticated, and introduces me as the elder Miss Cobb,
and says that if I don't stop reading Scott's novels and learn
more arithmetic she will put white caps on me, and make me walk to
church in carpet slippers and with grandmother's stick."

"But you don't seem to have stopped, Miss Sylvia."

"No; but I'm stopping. Georgiana always gives us time, but we get
right at last. It was two years before she could make my brother
go to West Point. He was wild and rough, and wanted to raise
tobacco, and float with it down to New Orleans, and have a good
time. Then when she had gotten him to go she was afraid he'd come
back, and so she persuaded my mother to live here, where there
isn't any tobacco, and where I could be sent to school. That took
her a year, and now she is breaking up my habit of reading nothing
but novels. She gets us all down in the end. One day when she
and Joe were little children they were out at the wood-pile, and
Georgiana was sitting on a log eating a jam biscuit, with her feet
on the log in front of her. Joe had a hand-axe, and was chopping
at anything till he caught sight of her feet. Then he went to the
end of the log, and whistled like a steamboat, and began to hack
down in that direction, calling out to her: 'Take your toes out of
the way, Georgiana. I am coming down the river. The current is
up and I can't stop.' 'My toes were there first,' said Georgiana,
and went on eating her biscuit. 'Take them out of the way, I tell
you,' he shouted as he came nearer, 'or they'll get cut off.' 'They
were there first,' repeated Georgiana, and took another delicious
nibble. Joe cut straight along, and went whack right into her five
toes. Georgiana screamed with all her might, but she held her foot
on the log, till Joe dropped the hatchet with horror, and caught
her in his arms. 'Georgiana, I _told_ you to take your toes away,'
he cried; 'you are such a little fool,' and ran with her to the
house. But she always had control over him after that."

To-day I saw Sylvia enter the arbor, and shortly afterwards I
followed with a book.

"When you stop reading novels and begin to read history, Miss
Sylvia, here is the most remarkable history of Kentucky