“I like that girl,” said the old Governor-General, “she is intelligent and modest both.  There is something fine about the shape of her head.”

When we went home, Metelill was as proud and delighted as possible at what she called the Bird’s triumph; but Avice did not seem at all elated, but to take her knowledge as a mere outcome of her ordinary Oxford life, where allusions, especially Ruskinese and Dantesque, came naturally.  And then, as grandmamma went to sleep in her corner, the two girls and I fell into a conversation on that whole question of Action and Contemplation.  At least Metelill asked the explanation, but I doubt whether she listened much while Avice and I talked out the matter, and I felt myself a girl again, holding the old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made her my sister for those two happy years, and—­Well, it is no use paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of companionship before you came on the scene.  And to think what a jewel I have missed all this time!

18.—­I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have to tell you.  I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice—­

“I tell you it was no joke.  It’s no use saying so,” and I beheld Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel.  “I’ve looked on at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my sister I will speak out.”

By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley’s very improper tone, and asking what was the matter.  Isa sprang to me, declaring that it was all Charley’s absurd suspicion and misconstruction.  At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.

Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until she could return it.  Charley broke out.  “As if I did not know better than that!  Didn’t you make him give you that parasol and promise him your photo?  Ay, and give it him in return?  You thought he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun over him.  And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts.  I’m not strait-laced.  I wouldn’t mind having the photos of a hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is—­is—­well—­a regular old maid about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on purpose to upset Metelill’s chances.”