for it,' so ominous was the commencement, and her expectations were fulfilled when Miss Winter had solemnly, seated herself, and taken out her netting. 'I wished to speak to you about dear Ethel,' said the governess; 'you know how unwilling I always am to make any complaint, but I cannot be satisfied with her present way of going

on.'

'Indeed,' said Margaret. 'I am much grieved to hear this. I thought she had been taking great pains to improve.'

'So she was at one time. I would not by any means wish to deny it, and it is not of her learning that I speak, but of a hurried, careless way of doing everything, and an irritability at being interfered with.'

Margaret knew how Miss Winter often tried Ethel's temper, and was inclined to take her sister's part. 'Ethel's time is so fully occupied,' she said.

"That is the very thing that I was going to observe, my dear. Her time is too much occupied, and my conviction is, that it is hurtful to a girl of her age.' .

This was a new idea to Margaret, who was silent, longing to prove Miss Winter wrong, and not have to see poor Ethel pained by having to relinquish any of her cherished pursuits.

You see there is that Cocksmoor,' said Miss Winter. 'You do not know how far off it is, my dear; much too great a distance for a young girl to be walking continually in all weathers.'

"That's a question for papa,' thought Margaret.

'Besides,' continued Miss Winter, 'those children engross almost all her time and thoughts. She is working for them, preparing lessons, running after them continually. It takes off her whole mind from her proper occupations, unsettles her, and I do think it is beyond what fits a young lady of her age.'

Margaret was silent.

'In addition,' said Miss Winter, she is at every spar moment busy with Latin and Greek, and I cannot think that to keep pace with a boy of Norman's age and ability can be desirable for her.'

'It is a great deal,' said Margaret, 'but-'

'I am convinced that she does more than is right,' continued Miss Winter. 'She may not feel any ill effects at present, but you may depend upon it, it will tell on her by-and-by. Besides, she does not attend to anything properly. At one time she was improving in neatness and orderly habits. Now, you surely must have seen how much less tidy her hair and dress have been.'

'I have thought her hair looking rather rough,' said Margaret, disconsolately.

'No wonder,' said Miss Winter, 'for Flora and Mary tell me she hardly spends five minutes over it in the morning, and with a book before her the whole time.

If

I send her up to make it fit to be seen, I meet with looks of annoyance. She leaves her books in all parts of the school-room for Mary to put away, and her table drawer is one mass of confusion. Her lessons she does well enough, I own, though what I should call much too fast; but have you looked at her work lately?'

'She does not work very well,' said Margaret, who was at that moment, though Miss Winter did not know it, regathering a poor child's frock that Ethel had gallopped through with more haste than good speed.

'She works a great deal worse than little Blanche,' said Miss Winter, 'and though it may not be the fashion to say so in these days, I consider good needlework far more important than accomplishments. Well, then, Margaret, I should wish you only just to look at her writing.'

And Miss Winter opened a French exercise book, certainly containing anything but elegant specimens of penmanship. Ethel's best writing was an upright, disjointed, niggle, looking more like Greek than anything else, ex

cept where here and there it made insane efforts to become running-hand, and thereby lost its sole previous good quality of legibility, while the lines waved about the sheet in almost any direction but the horizontal. The necessity she believed herself under of doing what Harry called writing with the end of her nose, and her always holding her pen with her fingers almost in the ink, added considerably to the difficulty of the performance. This being at her best, the worst may be supposed to be indiscribable, when dashed off in a violent hurry, and considerably garnished with blots. Margaret thought she had seen the worst, and was sighing at being able to say nothing for it, when Miss Winter confounded her by turning a leaf, and showing it was possible to make a still wilder combination of scramble, niggle, scratch, and crookedness, and this was supposed to be an amended edition! Miss Winter explained that Ethel had in an extremely short time performed an exercise in which no fault could be detected except the writing, which was pronounced to be too atrocious to be shown up to M. Ballompré. On being desired to write it over again, she had obeyed with a very bad grace, and some murmurs about Cocksmoor, and produced the second specimen, which in addition to other defects had some elisions from arrant carelessness, depriving it of its predecessor's merit of being good French. Miss Winter had been so provoked that she believed this to be an effect of ill temper, and declared that she should certainly have kept Ethel at home to write it over again, if it had not so happened that Dr. May had proposed to walk part of the way with her and Richard, and the governess was unwilling to bring her into disgrace with him. Margaret was so grateful to her for this forbearance, that it disposed her to listen the more patiently to the same representations put in what Miss Winter fancied different forms. Margaret was much perplexed. She could not but see much truth in what Miss Winter said, and yet

she could not bear to thwart Ethel, whom she admire with her whole heart; and that dry experience, and pre judiced preciseness, did not seem capable of entering int her sister's thirst for learning and action. When Miss Win ter said Ethel would grow up odd, eccentric, and blue, Mar garet was ready to answer that she would be superior to everyone; and when the governess urged her to insist on Cocksmoor being given up, she felt impatient of that utter want of sympathy for the good work.

All that evening Margaret longed for a quiet time to reflect, but it never came till she was in bed; and when she had made up her mind how to speak to Ethel, it was five times harder to secure her alone. Even when Margaret had her in the room by herself, she looked wild and eager, and said she could not stay, she had some Thucydides to do.

'Won't you stay with me a little while quietly?' said Margaret; 'we hardly ever have one of our talks.'

'I didn't mean to vex you, dear Margaret, I like nothing so well, only we are never alone, and I've no time.'

Pray do spare me a minute, Ethel, for I have something I must say to you, and I am afraid you won't like it, so do listen kindly.'

Oh!' said Ethel, 'Miss Winter has been talking to you. I know she said she would tell you she wants me to give up Cocksmoor. You aren't dreaming of it, Margaret !'

'Indeed, dear Ethel, I should be very sorry, but one thing I am sure of, that there is something amiss in your way of going on.'

'Did she show you that horrid exercise?'

'Yes.'

'Well, I know it was baddish writing, but just listen, Margaret. We promised six of the children to print them each a verse of a hymn on a card to learn. Ritchie did

three, and then could not go on, for the book that the others were in, was lost till last evening, and then he was writing for papa. So I thought I would do them before we went to Cocksmoor, and that I should squeeze time out of the morning; but I got a bit of Sophocles that was so horridly hard, it eat up all my time, and I don't understand it properly now; I must get Norman to tell me. And that ran in my head, and made me make a mistake in my sum, and have to begin it again. Then, just as I thought I had saved time over the exercise, comes Miss Winter and tells me I must do it over again, and scolded me, besides, about the ink on my fingers. She would send me up at once to get it off, and I could not find nurse and her bottle of stuff for it, so that wasted over so much more time, and I was so vexed that, really and truly, my hand shook, and I could not write any better.'

'No, I thought it looked as if you had been in one of your agonies.'

'And she thought I did it on purpose, and that made me angry, and so we got into a dispute, and away went all the little moment I might have had, and I was forced to go to Cocksmoor as a promise breaker !'

'Don't you think you had better have taken pains at first ?'

'Well, so I did with the sense, but I hadn't time to look at the writing much.'

'You would have made better speed if you had.'

'Oh! yes, I know I was wrong, but it is a great plague altogether. Really, Margaret, I shan't get Thucydides done.'

'You must wait a little longer, please, Ethel, for I want to say to you that I am afraid you are doing too much, and that prevents you from doing things well, as you were trying to do last autumn.'

'You are not thinking of my not going to Cocksmoor!' cried Ethel, vehemently.