was very odd that she should have chosen a partner who was of her own
age.

"I remember no more of that evening; but the next Friday Miss Vaughan
came again, accompanied by Mrs. Harris.

"Harris played the great lady quite as well as the Mistresses Vaughan
had done, acting in their natural characters; as she always, at home,
took her meals with her young lady when in their own rooms, she was
invited to tea in the parlour; and to please Evelyn, I was also asked,
for I had been again chosen as her partner.

"Our friendship was growing quickly; it was impossible to love Miss
Vaughan a little, if one loved her at all. She was the sweetest,
humblest child I had ever known; and she talked of things which,
although I did not understand them, greatly excited my interest.

"It was in October that Evelyn first came to dance at the Abbey, and
she came every Friday till the holidays. We thought she looked very
unwell the last time she came; and she said she was sorry that some
weeks would pass before she saw me again; she repeated the same to Mrs.
Harris.

"All the other children went home for Christmas, but I had no home to
go to; and I saw them depart with much sorrow, and was crying to find
myself alone, having watched the last of my school-fellows going out
with her mother through the garden-gate, when Miss Latournelle came up
all in a hurry.

"'Miss Reynolds,' she said, 'what do you think? You were born, surely,
with a silver spoon in your mouth. But there is a letter come, and you
are to go from church on Christmas Day in the coach to spend the
holidays with Miss Vaughan. It is all settled; and you are to have a
new slip, and crape tucker and apron, and a best black cap. Come, come,
we must look up your things, and we have only two days for it; come
away, fetch your thimble; and don't let me see any idleness.'

"The kind teacher was as pleased for me as I was for myself; though she
drove me about the next two days, as if I had been her slave.

"When I found myself in the coach, on Christmas Day, all alone, and
driving away with four horses to the great house at the end of the
avenue, I really did not know what to make of myself. I tried all the
four corners of the coach, looked out at every window, nodded to one or
two schoolfellows I saw walking in the streets, and made myself as
silly as the daw in borrowed feathers."

The children laughed, and the old lady went on:

"When I got to the lodge and the avenue, ho