Our other mother, Edith, implored, and was laughed down by Charley, who declared she could swim, and that she did not think Uncle Martyn would have been so old-womanish.  Metelill was so tender and caressing with her frightened mother that I thought here at last was submission, and with a good grace.  But after a turn on the esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say, “Dear mother, will you very much MIND if I go?  They will be so disappointed, and there will be such a fuss if I don’t; and Charley really ought to have some one with her besides Pie, who will heed nothing but magnifying medusae.”  I am afraid it is true, as Isa says, that it was all owing to the walk with that young Mr Horne.

Poor Edith fell into such a state of nervous anxiety that I could not leave her, and she confided to me how Charley had caught her foolish masculine affectations in the family of this very Bertie Elwood, and told me of the danger of an attachment between Metelill and a young government clerk who is always on the look-out for her.  “And dear Metelill is so gentle and gracious that she cannot bear to repel any one,” says the mother, who would, I see, be thankful to part with either daughter to our keeping in hopes of breaking off perilous habits.  I was saved, however, from committing myself by the coming in of Isabel.  That child follows me about like a tame cat, and seems so to need mothering that I cannot bear to snub her.

She came to propound to me a notion that has risen among these Oxford girls, namely, that I should take out their convalescent dressmaker as my maid instead of poor Amelie.  She is quite well now, and going back next week; but a few years in a warm climate might be the saving of her health.  So I agreed to go with Isa to look at her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all youthful enthusiasm.  Edith went out driving with my mother, and we began our tete-A-tete walk, in which I heard a great deal of the difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper, instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good-natured mockery.  The treatment may suit Mary’s own daughters, but ‘Just as you please, my dear,’ is not good for sensitive, anxious spirits.  We passed Jane and Avice reading together under a rock; I was much inclined to ask them to join us, but Isa was sure they were much happier undisturbed, and she was so unwilling to share me with any one that I let them alone.  I was much pleased with the dressmaker, Maude Harris, who is a nice, modest, refined girl, and if the accounts I get from her employers bear out what I hear of her, I shall engage her; I shall be glad, for the niece’s sake, to have that sort of young woman about the place.  She speaks most warmly of what the Misses Fulford have done for her.

Jane will be disappointed if I cannot have her rival candidate—­a pet schoolgirl who works under the Bourne Parva dressmaker.  “What a recommendation!” cries Pica, and there is a burst of mirth, at which Jane looks round and says, “What is there to laugh at?  Miss Dadworthy is a real good woman, and a real old Bourne Parva person, so that you may be quite sure Martha will have learnt no nonsense to begin with.”