ound new sources of interest," suggested I, perhaps
a little too tenderly, for I had some sympathy with her dread of that
particular phase of existence, middle-agedness. "Perhaps as the
mistress of a household--"

"Worse and worse!" screamed Flora. "A miserable comforter you are! As
if it were not enough merely to grow old, but one must be a slave and
a martyr, never doing any thing one would prefer to do, nor going
anywhere that one wants to go,--bound for ever to one spot, and one
perpetual companion--"

"Planning dinners every day for cooks hardly less ignorant than
yourself," added I, laughing at her selfish horror of matronly
bondage, yet provoked at it. "Miss Etty, would _you_, if you could,
stand still instead of going forward?"

"My happiness is altogether different from Flora's," she replied,
"though we were brought up side by side. What has taught me to be
independent of the world and its notice was my being continually
compared with her, and assured, with compassionate regret, that I had
none of those qualifications which could give me success in general
society."

"Which was a libel--" I began.

"Without the last syllable," said Flora, catching up the word.

"At any rate, I knew I was plain and shy, and made friends slowly. So
I chose such pleasures as should be under my own control, and could
never fail me. They make my life so much happier and more precious
than it was ten years ago, that I feel certain I shall have a wider
and fuller enjoyment of the same ten years hence."

What they are, I partly guess, and partly drew from her, in her
uncommonly frank mood. I begin to perceive that I, as well as Flora,
have been cherishing most mistaken and unsatisfactory aims. My surly
old inner self has often hinted as much, but I would not hear him.
Etty may have _her_ mistaken views too, but she has set me thinking.

Well, you crusty old curmudgeon, what has been my course since the awe
of the schoolmaster ceased to be a sort of external conscience?

"You told me study was none of my business," says Conscience, "and a
pretty piece of work you have made of it without me. Idle in college,
and, when you began to perceive the connection between study and what
people call success in life, overworking yourself, here you are, and
just beginning to bethink yourself that I might have furnished just
the right degree of stimulus, if you had but allowed it."--

Hark! hark! It is the duet! That silvery second is Etty