ere likely to want (as you can train yourselves by
settling in properly to do your preparation)--and they did not teach
themselves to start five minutes sooner instead of leaving things to the
last moment. (They think that the consequent family thundercloud is their
sad fate from their being of a slow constitution.) But if you have only
one horse and your neighbour two, and you are to dine at the same house,
it only means that you must order yours earlier. Do not start together and
then bewail your sad fate; nothing condemns you to be late except your own
bad management.

Especially be careful to be up early when you are going to early service
with your mother; it fidgets her to wait--she recalls all your many
previous sins of the same kind--and just when you both want to feel _at
one_, you start off together (rather, I should say, you overtake her),
both feeling very much _at two_. And yet you made an effort to go! and you
feel she ought to be pleased with you--do not spoil it by that fly in the
ointment of being late.

* * * * *

It seems to me that the Benevolent Despot, the Peter Grievous, and the
Martyred Snail, are people to avoid in choosing your family!

Now, the people to choose for your family party are, first, _the Reliable
Person_. I know one person who is a perfect tower of strength, she is full
of common sense: if you give her a commission she is sure to get the right
thing and to do it reasonably; she knows exactly what she paid, and she
tells you! If she undertakes to do a thing it is certain to be done in
good time; she does not wait till the very day the thing is wanted and
then find that it cannot be got.

Now, _you_ often let yourselves do a stupid thing, or a forgetful thing,
and then say, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" and feel as if you had wiped it out. Not
at all! You have lost one chance of growing into a reliable woman. In all
your life you will only have a certain limited number of chances, and
should use every one you have--to be reliable is worth all the genius in
the world for comfort to others, and _you can each win this crown_ if you
care to do so.

One other person I would choose if I were fated to have sisters, would be
the one who purrs when she is pleased. It takes all the colour and air out
of life when people gaze impassively at beautiful things, or hear lovely
things and never seem to have taken them in; or meet kindness and look as
if it was not there. Y