e she seemed nearly about her own age, or perhaps a
year or two older. Olive often contrived to walk in her garden when her
neighbours were in theirs--so that she could hear the boys' cheerful
voices over the high hedge. By this means she learnt their Christian
names, Robert and Lyle--the latter of which she admired very much, and
thought it exactly suited the pretty, delicate younger brother. She
wished much to find out the name of their sister--but could not; for the
elder girl took little notice of them, or they of her. So Olive, after
thinking and talking of her for some time, as "my beauty next door," to
Mrs. Rothesay's great amusement, at last christened her by the imaginary
name of Maddalena.

After a few weeks it seemed as though the interest between the young
neighbours became mutual--for Olive, in her walks, sometimes fancied
she saw faces watching _her_, too from the staircase window. And once,
peering over the wall, she perceived the mischievous eyes and pointed
finger of the elder boy, and heard the younger one say, reproachfully--

"Don't--pray! You are very cruel, Bob."

And Olive, deeply blushing--though at what she scarcely knew--fled into
the house, and did not take her usual garden walks for some days.

At last, when, one lovely spring evening, she stood leaning over the low
wall at the garden's end, idly watching the river flow by beneath, she
turned round, and saw fixed on her, with a curiosity not unmingled with
interest, the dark eyes of "Maddalena." Somehow or other, the two girls
smiled--and then the elder spoke.

"The evening was very fine," she said; "and it was rather dull, walking
in the garden all alone."

Olive had never found it so; but she was used to it. Her young neighbour
was not; she had always lived in a large town, etc. etc.

A few more simple nothings spun out the conversation for ten minutes.
The next day it was resumed, and extended to twenty; during which Olive
learnt that her young beauty's name, so far from being anything so fine
as Maddalena, was plain Sarah--or _Sara_, as its owner took care to
explain. Olive was rather disappointed--but she thought of Coleridge's
ladye love; consoled herself, and tried to console the young lady, with
repeating,

My pensive Sarah! thy soft cheek reclined, etc.

At which Miss Sara Derwent laughed, and asked who wrote that very pretty
poetry?

Olive was a little confounded. She fancied everybody read Coleridge, and
her compan