playing with awkward humility, along with
some of the rough village girls, who were as
expert at the game as she was unapt and
slow, I hesitated a little, and at last I called
to her.

"How do you, my dear?" I said. "How
come you here, so far from home?"

She reddened, and then looked up at me
with her large serious eyes.

"Aunt Annabel sent me into the wood to
meditate—and—and—it was very dull—and
I heard these little girls playing and laughing
—and I had my sixpence with me and—it
was not wrong, was it ma'am?—I came to
them and told one of them I would give it to
her if she would ask the others to let me
play with them."

"But my dear, they are—some of them—
very rough little children, and not fit
companions for a Morton."

"But I am a Mannisty, ma'am!" she
pleaded, with so much entreaty in her ways
that, if I had not known what naughty bad girls
some of them were, I could not have resisted
her longing for companions of her own age.
As it was, I was angry with them for having
taken her sixpence; but, when she had told
me which it was, and saw that I was
going to reclaim it, she clung to me, and
said:—

"Oh! don't, ma'am—you must not. I
gave it to her quite of my own self."

So I turned away; for there was truth in
what the child said. But to this day I have
never told Ethelinda what became of her
sixpence. I took Miss Cordelia home with me
while I changed my dress to be fit to take her
back to the Hall. And on the way, to make
up for her disappointment, I began talking of
my dear Miss Phillis and her bright pretty
youth. I had never named her name since
her death to any one but Ethelinda—and that
only on Sundays and quiet times. And I
could not have spoken of her to a grown-up
person; but somehow to Miss Cordelia it
came out quite natural. Not of her latter
days, of course; but of her pony, and her
little black King Charles's dogs, and all the
living creatures that were glad in her
presence when first I knew her. And nothing
would satisfy the child but I must go into
the Hall garden and show her where Miss
Phillis's garden had been. We were deep in
our talk, and she was stooping down to clear
the plot from weeds, when I heard a sharp voice
cry out, "Cordelia! Cordelia! Dirtying your
frock with kneeling on the wet grass! It is
not my week: but I shall tell your Aunt
Annabella of you."

And the window was shut down with a jerk.
It was Miss Dorothy. And I felt almost as
guilty as poor little Miss Cordelia: for I had
heard from Mrs. Turner that we had given
great offence to Miss Dorothy by not going to
call on her in her room that day on which we
had paid our respects to her sisters; and I
had a sort of an idea that seeing Miss
Cordelia with me was almost as much of a fault
as the kneeling down on the wet grass. So I
thought I would take the bull by the horns.
"Will you take me to your Aunt Dorothy,
my dear?" said I.

The little girl had no longing to go into
her aunt Dorothy's room, as she had so
evidently had at Miss Arabella's door. On the
contrary, she pointed it out to me at a safe
distance, and then went away in the
measured step she was taught to use in that
house; where such things as running, going
upstairs two steps at a time, or jumping down
three, were considered undignified and vulgar.
Miss Dorothy's room was the least prepossessing
of any. Somehow it had a north-east
look about it, though it did face direct south;
and, as for Miss Dorothy herself, she was
more like a "Cousin Betty" than anything
else; if you know what a Cousin Betty is, and
perhaps it is too old-fashioned a word to be
understood by any one who has learnt the
foreign languages: but when I was a girl,
there used to be poor crazy women rambling
about the country, one or two in a district.
They never did any harm that I know of;
they might have been born idiots, poor
creatures, or crossed in love, who knows? But
they roamed the country, and were well
known at the farm-houses; where they often
got food and shelter for as long a time as
their restless minds would allow them to
stay in any one place; and the farmer's wife
would, maybe, rummage up a ribbon, or a
feather, or a smart old breadth of silk, to
please the harmless vanity of these poor crazy
women; and they would go about so
bedizened sometimes that, as we called them
always "Cousin Betty," we made it into a kind
of proverb for any one dressed in a fly-away
showy style, and said they were like a
Cousin Betty. So now you know what I mean
that Miss Dorothy was like. Her dress was
white, like Miss Annabella's; but, instead of
the black velvet hat her sister wore, she had
on, even in the house, a small black silk
bonnet. This sounds as if it should be less
like a Cousin Betty than a hat; but wait
till I tell you how it was lined—with strips of
red silk, broad near the face, narrow near the
brim; for all the world like the rays of the
rising sun, as they are painted on the public-
house sign. And her face was like the sun;
as round as an apple; and with rouge on,
without any doubt: indeed, she told me once,
a lady was not dressed unless she had put
her rouge on. Mrs. Turner told us she
studied reflections a great deal; not that she
was a thinking woman in general, I should
say; and that this rayed lining was the fruit
of her study. She had her ihair pulled
together, so that her forehead was quite
covered with it; and I won't deny that I
rather wished myself at home, as I stood
facing her in the doorway. She pretended
she did not know who I was, and made
me tell all about myself; and then it turned