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her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all youthful enthusiasm. Edith went out driving with my mother, and we began our tête-à-tête walk, in which I heard a great deal of the difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper, instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good-natured mockery. The treatment may suit Mary's own daughters, but 'Just as you please, my dear,' is not good for sensitive, anxious spirits. We passed Jane and Avice reading together under a rock; I was much inclined to ask them to join us, but Isa was sure they were much happier undisturbed, and she was so unwilling to share me with any one that I let them alone. I was much pleased with the dressmaker, Maude Harris, who is a nice, modest, refined girl, and if the accounts I get from her employers bear out what I hear of her, I shall engage her; I shall be glad, for the niece's sake, to have that sort of young woman about the place. She speaks most warmly of what the Misses Fulford have done for her.

Jane will be disappointed if I cannot have her rival candidate-a pet schoolgirl who works under the Bourne Parva dressmaker. 'What a recommendation!' cries Pica, and there is a burst of mirth, at which Jane looks round and says, 'What is there to laugh at? Miss Dadworthy is a real good woman, and a real old Bourne Parva person, so that you may be quite sure Martha will have learnt no nonsense to begin with.'

'No,' says Pica, 'from all such pomps and vanities as style, she will be quite clear.'

While Avice's friendship goes as far as to say that if Aunt Charlotte cannot have Maude, perhaps Martha could get a little more training. Whereupon Jane runs off by the yard explanations of the admirable training-religious, moral, and intellectual-of Bourne Parva, illustrated by the best answers of her favourite scholars, anecdotes of them, and the reports of the inspectors, religious and secular; and Avice listens with patience, nay, with respectful sympathy.

12.-We miss Mary and Martyn more than I expected. Careless and easy-going as they seem, they made a difference in the ways of the young people; they were always about with them, not as dragons, but for their own pleasure. The presence of a professor must needs impose upon young men, and Mary, with her brilliant wit and charming manners, was a check without knowing it. The boating party came back gay and triumphant, and the young men joined in our late meal; and oh, what a noise there was! though I must confess that it was not they who made the most. Metelill was not guilty of the noise, but she was-I fear I must say it-flirting with all her might with a youth on each side of her, and teasing a third; I am afraid she is one of those girls who are charming to all, and doubly charming to your sex, and that it will never do to have her among the staff. I don't think it is old-maidish in us to be scandalised at her walking up and down the esplanade with young Horne till ten o'clock last night; Charley was behind with Bertie Elwood, and, I grieve to say, was smoking. It lasted till Horace Druce went out to tell them that Metelill must come in at once, as it was time to shut up the house.

The Oxford girls were safe indoors; Isa working chess problems with another of the lads, Avice keeping Jane company over the putting the little ones to sleep-in Mount Lebanon, as they call the Druce lodging-and Pica preserving microscopic objects. 'Isn't she awful?' said one of those pupils. 'She's worse than all the dons in Cambridge. She wants to be at it all day long, and all through the vacation.'

They perfectly flee from her. They say she is always whipping out a microscope and lecturing upon protoplasms-and there is some truth in the accusation. She is almost as bad on the emancipation of women, on which there is a standing battle, in earnest with Jane-in joke with Metelill; but it has, by special orders, to be hushed at dinner, because it almost terrifies grandmamma. I fear Pica tries to despise her!

This morning the girls are all out on the beach in pairs and threes, the pupils being all happily shut up with their tutor. I see the invalid lady creep out with her beach-rest from the intermediate house, and come down to her usual morning station in the shade of a rock, unaware, poor thing, that it has been monopolised by Isa and Metelill. Oh, girls! why don't you get up and make room for her? No; she moves on to the next shady place, but there Pica has a perfect fortification of books spread on her rug, and Charley is sketching on the outskirts, and the fox-terrier barks loudly. Will she go on to the third seat? where I can see, though she cannot, Jane and Avice sitting together, and Freddy shovelling sand at their feet. Ah! at last she is made welcome. Good girls! They have seated her and her things, planted a parasol to shelter her from the wind, and lingered long enough not to make her feel herself turning them out before making another settlement out of my sight.

Three o'clock.-I am sorry to say Charley's sketch turned into a caricature of the unprotected female wandering in vain in search of a bit of shelter, with a torn parasol, a limp dress, and dragging rug, and altogether unspeakably forlorn. It was exhibited at the dinner-table, and elicited peals of merriment, so that we elders begged to see the cause of the young people's amusement. My blood was up, and when I saw what it was, I said-

'I wonder you like to record your own discourtesy, to call it nothing worse.'

'But, Aunt Charlotte,' said Metelill in her pretty pleading way, 'we did not know her.'

'Well, what of that?' I said.

'Oh, you know it is only abroad that people expect that sort of things from strangers.'

'One of the worst imputations on English manners I ever heard,' I said.

'But she was such a guy!' cried Charley. 'Mother said she was sure she was not a lady.'

'And therefore you did not show yourself one,' I could not but return.

There her mother put in a gentle entreaty that Charley would not distress grandmamma with these loud arguments with her aunt, and I added, seeing that Horace Druce's attention was attracted, that I should like to have added another drawing called 'Courtesy,' and shown that there was some hospitality even to strangers, and then I asked the two girls about her. They had joined company again, and carried her beach-rest home for her, finding out by the way that she was a poor homeless governess who had come down to stay in cheap lodgings with an old nurse to try to recruit herself till she could go out again. My mother became immediately interested, and has sent Emily to call on her, and to try and find out whether she is properly taken care of.

Isa was very much upset at my displeasure. She came to me afterwards and said she was greatly grieved; but Metelill would not move, and she had always supposed it wrong to make acquaintance with strangers in that chance way. I represented that making room was not picking up acquaintance, and she owned it, and was really grateful for the reproof; but, as I told her, no doubt such a rule must be necessary in a place like Oxford.

How curiously Christian courtesy and polished manners sometimes separate themselves! and how conceit interferes with both! I acquit Metelill and Isa of all but thoughtless habit, and Pica was absorbed. She can be well mannered enough when she is not defending the rights of woman, or hotly dogmatical on the crude theories she has caught-and suppose she has thought out, poor child! And Jane, though high-principled, kind, and self-sacrificing, is too narrow and-not exactly conceited-but exclusive and Bourne Parvaish, not to be as bad in her way, though it is the sound one. The wars of the Druces and Maronites, as Martyn calls them, sometimes rage beyond the bounds of good humour.

Ten P.M.-I am vexed too on another score. I must tell you that this hotel does not shine in puddings and sweets, and Charley has not been ashamed to grumble beyond the bounds of good manners. I heard some laughing and joking going on between the girls and the pupils, Metelill with her 'Oh no! You won't! Nonsense!' in just that tone which means 'I wish, I would, but I cannot bid you,'-the tone I do not like to hear in a maiden of any degree.

And behold three of those foolish lads have brought her gilt and painted boxes of bon-bons, over which there was a prodigious giggling and semi-refusing and bantering among the young folks, worrying Emily and me excessively, though we knew it would not do to interfere.

There is a sea-fog this evening unfavourable to the usual promenades, and we elders, including the tutor, were sitting with my mother, when, in her whirlwind fashion, in burst Jane, dragging her little sister Chattie with her, and breathlessly exclaiming, 'Father, father, come and help! They are gambling, and I can't get Meg away!'

When the nervous ones had been convinced that no one had been caught by the tide or fallen off the rocks, Jane explained that Metelill had given one box of bon-bons to the children, who were to be served with one apiece all round every day. And the others were put up by Metelill to serve as prizes in the 'racing game,' which some one had routed out, left behind in the lodging, and which was now spread on the dining-table, with all the young people playing in high glee, and with immense noise.

'Betting too!' said Jane in horror. 'Mr. Elwood betted three chocolate creams upon Charley, and Pica took it! Father! Come and call Meg away.'

She spoke exactly as if she were summoning him to snatch her sister from rouge et