D GOOD-BYES.

Six months had passed. Susan's visit to Ramsgate was drawing to a
close, for her mother had said in her last letter that she should soon
be able to fix the day of her return. Six whole months! How long, how
endless they had seemed to look forward to, but how very short they were
to look back on. Susan could hardly believe they were really gone. She
remembered well how desolate she had felt at first, how strange
everything had been to her, and how she had longed to see a familiar
face; but now, though of course it would be delightful to go home, there
really were some things in Ramsgate she would be sorry to leave. One of
these was the sea. It had almost frightened her at first, but now she
had grown to love its changing face and voice, which were scarcely ever
the same for two days together. For sometimes, sparkling with smiles,
it would keep up a pleasant ripple of conversation, breaking now and
again into laughter. At other times, darkly frowning, it would toss
itself up and down in restless vexations, and hurl its waves on the
shore with hoarse exclamations of anger. You could never be sure of it
for long together, and in this it was strangely like the other thing
which Susan felt she should miss--Sophia Jane. She and the sea were
about equal in the uncertainty of their moods, for it must not be
supposed that her nature was so changed by her illness that she became
at once a good and agreeable little girl. This is not easy when one has
become used for a long while to be tiresome and ill-tempered, for
"habit," as Mrs Winslow had said, is a "giant power." The longer we
have done wrong the more difficult it is to do right. And yet in some
ways she was altered; she was not quite the same Sophia Jane who had
said, "I like to vex 'em," six months ago.

Grateful for past kindness she now made many small efforts to please
Aunt Hannah, and would even sometimes check herself when most irritated
by Nanna's and Margaretta's reproofs. Naughty or good, she had now
become such a close companion to Susan that any pleasure or amusement
unshared by her would have been blank and dull. Now Susan knew what it
was to have a companion she did not like to think of the time when she
should learn lessons alone, and play alone, and have no one to talk over
things with and make plans. Troubles were lessened and joys doubled by
being shared, and when she thought of life at home without Sophia Jane
she felt quite s