Aldith MacCarthy learnt French from the same teacher that Meg was going to twice a week, and after an exchange of chocolates, hair-ribbons, and family confidences a friendship sprang up.

Aldith had three grown-up sisters, whom she aped in everything, and was considerably wiser in the world than simple-minded, romantic Meg.

She lent Meg novels, “Family Herald Supplements”, “Young Ladies’ Journals”, and such publications, and the young girl took to them with avidity, surprised at the new world into which they took her; for Charlotte Yonge and Louisa Alcott and Miss Wetherall had hitherto formed her simple and wholesome fare.

Meg began to dream rose-coloured dreams of the time when her fair, shining hair should be gathered up into “a simple knot at the back of her head” or “brushed into a regal coronet,” these being the styles in which the heroines in the novels invariably dressed their hair.  A pigtail done in three was very unromantic.  That was why, as a sort of compromise, she cut herself a fringe and began to frizz out the end of her plait.  Her father stared at her, and said she looked like a shop-girl, when first he noticed it, and Esther told her she was a stupid child; but the looking-glass and Aldith reassured her.

The next thing was surreptitiously to lengthen her dresses, which were at the short-long stage.  In the privacy of her own bedroom she took the skirts of two or three of her frocks off the band, inserted a piece of lining for lengthening purposes, and then added a frill to the waists of her bodices to hide the join.  This dropped the skirts a good two inches, and made her look quite a tall, slim figure, as she was well aware.

And none of these things were very harmful.

But Aldith gradually grew dissatisfied with her waist.

“You’re at least twenty-three, Marguerite,” she said once, quite in a horrified way.  She never called her friend Meg, pronouncing that name to be “too domestic and altogether unlovely.”

Meg glanced from her own waist to her friend’s slender, beautiful one, and sighed profoundly.  “What ought I to be?” she said in a low tone; and Aldith had answered, “Eighteen—­or nineteen, Marguerite, at the most; true symmetrical grace can never he obtained with a waist twenty-three inches round.”

Aldith had not only made statements and comparisons, she had given her friend practical advice, and shown her how the thing was to be done.  And every night and morning Meg pulled away ruthlessly at her corset laces, and crushed her beautiful little body into narrower space.  She had already brought it within a girdle of twenty-one inches, which was a clear saving of two, and she had taken in all her dresses at the seams.

But she gave up the evening game of cricket, and she never made one at rounders now, much to the others’ disgust.  No one, to look at the sweet blossom-like face, and soft, calm eyes, could have guessed what torture was being felt beneath the now pretty, welt-fitting dress body.  To walk quickly was positive pain; to stoop, almost agony; but she endured it all with a heroism worthy of a truly noble cause.