ce of giving a lesson,
and therefore true kindness. Come, Daisy, is this terrible fit of
pride a proper return for such a mercy as we have had to-day?'

'If I didn't say so to myself a dozen times on the way home!--only Mary
came and made me so intolerably angry, by expecting me to take it as if
it had come from you or papa.'

'Ah, Daisy, that is the evil! If I had done my duty by you all, this
would not have been!'

'Now, Ethel, when you want to be worse, and more cutting than anything,
you go and tell me my faults are yours! For pity's sake, don't come to
that!'

'But I must, Daisy, for it is true. Oh, if you had only been a naughty
little girl!'

'What--and had it out then?' said Daisy, who was lying across the bed,
and put her golden head caressingly on Ethel's knee. 'If I had plagued
you then, you would have broken me in out of self-defence.'

'Something like it,' said Ethel. 'But you know, Daisy, the little last
treasure that mamma left did always seem something we could not make
enough of, and it didn't make you fractious or tiresome--at least not
to us--till we thought you could not be spoilt. And then I didn't see
the little faults so soon as I ought; and I'm only an elder sister,
after all, without any authority.'

'No, you're not to say that, Ethel, I mind your authority, and always
will. You are never a bother.'

'Ah, that's it, Daisy! If I had only been a bother, you might never
have got ahead of yourself.'

'Then you really think, like Charles Cheviot, that it was my doing,
Ethel?'

'What do you think yourself?'

Great tears gathered in the corners of the blue eyes. Was it weak in
Ethel not to bear the sight?

'My poor Daisy,' she said, 'yours is not all the burden! I ought not
to have taken up such a giddy company, or else I should have kept the
boy under my hand. But he is so discreet and independent, that it is
more like having a gentleman staying in the house, than a child under
one's charge; and one forgets how little he is; and I was as much off
my balance with spirits as you. It was the flightiness of us all; and
we have only to be thankful, and to be sobered for another time. I am
afraid the pride about being reproved is really the worse fault.'

'And what do you want me to do?--to go and tell papa all about it? I
mean to do that, of course; it is the only way to get comforted.'

'Of course it is; but--'

'You horrid creature, Ethel! I'll never say you aren't a bot