“Oh, you think I’m too young, do you?  But a little while ago you were always saying that I was grown up, and oughtn’t to want any more childish games.  What was I to do?”

“Upon my word!” exclaimed Mrs. Blake.  “I’ll buy you a doll for a birthday present, to keep you out of mischief.”

“Too late,” said Lottie from the rug.  She burst into sudden laughter, loud but not unmelodious.  “What rubbish we are talking!  Seventeen to-morrow, and Addie is nearly twenty; and sometimes I think I must be a hundred!”

“Well, you are talking nonsense now,” Mrs. Blake exclaimed.  “Why, you baby! only last November you would go into that wet meadow by the rectory to play trap-and-ball with Robin and Jack.  And such a fuss as there was if one wanted to make you the least tidy and respectable!”

“Was that last November?” Lottie stared thoughtfully into space.  “Queer that last November should be so many years ago, isn’t it?  Poor little Cock Robin!  I met him in the lane the day before he went away.  They will keep him in jackets, and he hates them so!  I laughed at him, and told him to be a good little boy and mind his book.  He didn’t seem to like it, somehow.”

“I dare say he didn’t,” said Addie, who had been silently recovering herself:  “there’s no mistake about it when you laugh at any one.”

“There shall be no mistake about anything I do,” Lottie asserted.  “I’m going to bed now.”  She sprang to her feet and stood looking at her sister:  “What jolly hair you’ve got, Addie!”

“Yours is just as thick, or thicker,” said Addie.

“Each individual hair is a good deal thicker, if you mean that.  ‘Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horse-hairs!’ That’s what Percy quoted to me one day when I was grumbling, and I said I wasn’t sure he wasn’t rude.  Addie, are Horace and Percival fond of each other?”

“How can I tell?  I suppose so.”

“I have my doubts,” said Lottie sagely.  “Why should they be?  There must be something queer, you know, or why doesn’t that stupid old man at Brackenhill treat Percival as the eldest?  Well, good-night.”  And Lottie went off, half saying, half singing, “Who killed Cock Robin?  I, said the Sparrow—­with my bow and arrow.”  And with a triumphant outburst of “I killed Cock Robin!” she banged the door after her.

There was a pause.  Then Addie said, “Seventeen to-morrow!  Mamma, Lottie really is grown-up now.”

“Is she?” Mrs. Blake replied doubtfully.  “Time she should be, I’m sure.”

Lottie had been a sore trial to her mother.  Addie was pretty as a child, tolerably presentable even at her most awkward age, glided gradually into girlhood and beauty, and finally “came out” completely to Mrs. Blake’s satisfaction.  But Lottie at fifteen or sixteen was her despair—­“Exactly like a great unruly boy,” she lamented.  She dashed through her lessons fairly well, but the moment she was released she was unendurable.  She