something I don’t like about her eyes.”  I wish he had not said so.  I know there is a kind of unfriendly feeling towards her among some of the girls, especially the Druces and Charley.  I have heard Charley openly call her a humbug, but I have thought much of this was dislike to the softer manners, and perhaps jealousy of my notice, and the expression that the old lord noticed is often the consequence of living in an uncongenial home.

Of course my monopoly of the hero soon ended, and as I had no acquaintances there, and the young ones had been absorbed into games, or had fraternised with some one, I betook myself to explorations in company with Jane, who had likewise been left out.  After we had wandered along a dazzling stand of calceolarias, she said, “Aunt Charlotte, papa says I ought to tell you something; I mean, why Avice could not come to-day, and why she has nothing to wear but her round hat.  It is because she and Pica spent all they had in paying for that Maude Harris at the Convalescent Home.  They had some kind of flimsy gauzy bonnets that were faded and utterly done for after Commemoration week; and as Uncle Martyn is always growling about ladies’ luggage, they thought it would be a capital plan to go without all the time they are down here, till another quarter is due.  Avice never thought of its not being right to go to Church such a figure, and now she finds that papa thinks the command to “have power on her head” really may apply to that sort of fashion, we are going to contrive something for Sunday, but it could not be done in time for to-day.  Besides, she had no dress but a serge.”

“She preferred dressing her sister to dressing herself,” I answered; and Jane began assuring me that no one knew how unselfish that dear old Bird is.  The little money she had, she added to Pica’s small remnant, and thus enough had been provided to fit the elder sister out.

“I suppose,” I said, “that Isa manages better, for she does not seem to be reduced to the same extremities, though I suppose she has less allowance than her cousins.”

“She has exactly the same.  I know it.”  And Jane caught herself up, evidently checking something I might have thought ill-natured, which made me respond something intended to be moralising, but which was perhaps foolish, about good habits of economy, and how this disappointment, taken so good-humouredly, would be a lesson to Avice.  “A lesson?  I should think so,” said Jane bluntly.  “A lesson not to lend her money to Isa”; and then, when I asked what she meant, she blurted out that all Isa’s so-called share of the subscription for Maude Harris had been advanced by Avice—­Pica had told her so, with comments on her sister’s folly in lending what she well knew would never be repaid; and Alice could not deny it, only defending herself by saying, she could not sacrifice the girl.  It was a very uncomfortable revelation, considering that Isa might have given her cousin my sovereign, but no doubt she did not think that proper, as I had meant it to be spent for this outing.