ovely."

Meg glanced from her own waist to her friend's slender, beautiful
one, and sighed profoundly. "What ought I to be?" she said in a
low tone; and Aldith had answered, "Eighteen--or nineteen,
Marguerite, at the most; true symmetrical grace can never be
obtained with a waist twenty-three inches round."

Aldith had not only made statements and comparisons, she had given
her friend practical advice, and shown her how the thing was to be
done. And every night and morning Meg pulled away ruthlessly
at her corset laces, and crushed her beautiful little body into
narrower space. She had already brought it within a girdle of
twenty-one inches, which was a clear saving of two, and she had
taken in all her dresses at the seams.

But she gave up the evening game of cricket, and she never made one
at rounders now, much to the others' disgust. No one, to look at
the sweet blossom-like face, and soft, calm eyes, could have
guessed what torture was being felt beneath the now pretty,
welt-fitting dress body. To walk quickly was positive pain; to
stoop, almost agony; but she endured it all with a heroism
worthy of a truly noble cause.

"How long shall I have to go on like this, Aldith?" she asked
once faintly, after a French lesson that she had scarcely been
able to sit through.

And the older girl answered carelessly, "Oh, you mustn't leave
it off, of course, but you don't feel it at all after a bit."

With which assurance Meg pursued her painful course.

Esther, the only person in a position to exercise any authority
in the matter, had not noticed at all, and, indeed, had she done,
so would not have thought very gravely of it, for it was only
four years since she, too, had been sixteen, and a "waist" had
been the most desirable thing on earth.

Once she had said unwittingly,

"What a nice little figure you are getting, Meg; this new
dressmaker certainly fits better than Miss Quinn"; and foolish
Meg, with a throb of delight, had redoubled her efforts.

Lynx-eyed Judy would have found her out long ago, and laughed her
to utter shame, but unfortunately for Meg's constitution she
was still at school, it being now the third month of her
absence.

Aldith only lived about twenty minutes' walk from Misrule, so
the two girls were always together. Twice a week they went down
to town in the river-boat to learn how to inquire, in polite
French, "Has the baker's young daughter the yellow hat, brown
gloves, and umbrella