speaking so frankly; but
when I see you I forget that I have not known you for years and years! I
feel somehow as if we had been friends all our life!"

"And so do I," said Lesley, surrendering herself to the spell, and
letting Ethel take both her hands and look into her face. "But you are
not at all like the English girls I expected to meet! I thought they
were all cold and stiff!"

"Have you never seen an English girl before, dear?"

"Yes, but I have had no English girl friend. I never talked to an
English girl before as I am talking to you."

"Oh, how charming!" said Ethel. "And I never before talked to a girl who
had lived in a convent! We are each a new experience to the other! What
a basis for friendship!"

"Do you think so?" said Lesley. "I should have thought the
opposite--that what is old and well-tried and established is the best to
found a friendship upon."

She spoke half sadly, with a memory of her parents and her own relations
with her father in her mind. Ethel gave her a shrewd glance, but made no
direct reply. She was a young woman of marvellously quick intuitions,
and she saw at once that Lesley's training had not fitted her to take up
her position in the Brooke household very easily.

When she went home she turned this matter over in her mind a good many
times; and was so absorbed in her reflections that her brother had to
ask her twice what she was thinking about before she answered him.

"I was thinking about Lesley Brooke," she answered promptly.

"A lively subject. I never saw a girl with a more melancholy
expression."

"Well, of course, as yet she hates everything," said Ethel,
comprehensively.

"Hates everything! That's a large order," said the young doctor.

They were at dinner--they dined at six every day on account of Ethel's
professional engagements; and it was not often that Maurice was at home.
When he was at home Ethel knew that he liked to talk to her, so she
abandoned her brown studies.

"Well, she hates the fog and the darkness, and the ugly buildings and
the solid furniture of Mr. Brooke's house, which dates back to the
Georgian era at the very least. I'm sure she hates Sarah. And I
shouldn't like to say that she hates Doctor Sophy"--Ethel always called
Miss Brooke Doctor Sophy--"but she doesn't like her very much. She is
awfully shocked because Doctor Sophy smokes cigarettes."

"Quite right of Miss Lesley Brooke to be shocked," said Maurice,
laughing. "However, she n