n comes in. He apparently has something on his mind, and
stands around first on one foot and then on the other, until the girl
asks him what seems to be the trouble, whereupon he gravely informs her
that a friend of his, a most worthy man indeed, who can write, and
fight, and--ah, do several more things all at once, wants her for his
wife. Then the girl smiles demurely at him, and says coyly--"

"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" shouted the other six girls,
with one voice.

"You don't need to ask Hinpoha who her favorite heroine is," said Migwan
laughing. "Ever since I've known her she's read the story of Priscilla
and John Alden at least once a week."

"Well, you must admit that she _was_ pretty clever," said Hinpoha,
blushing a little at the exposure of her fondness for love stories. "And
sensible, too. She wasn't afraid of speaking up and helping her bashful
lover along a little bit, instead of meekly accepting Standish's offer
and then spending the rest of her life sighing because John Alden hadn't
asked her."

"That's right," chimed in Sahwah. "I admire a girl with spirit. If Lady
Jane Gray had had a little more spirit she wouldn't have lost her head.
I'll warrant Priscilla Mullins would have found a way out of it if she
had been in the same scrape as Lady Jane. Now, your turn, Migwan."

"I see a girl living in a bleak house on the edge of a wild, lonely
moor," began Migwan. "All winter long the storms howl around the house
like angry spirits of the air. To amuse themselves in these long winter
evenings this girl and her sisters make up stories about the people that
live on the moors and tell them to each other around the fire, or after
they have crept into bed, and lie shivering under the blankets in the
icy cold room. The stories that my girl made up were so fascinating that
the others forgot the cold and the raw winds whistling about the house
and listened spellbound until she had finished."

"I know who that is," said Gladys, when Migwan paused. "Mig is forever
raving about Charlotte Bronte."

"The more I think about her the more wonderful she seems," said Migwan
warmly. "How a girl brought up in such a dead, cheerless place as
Haworth Churchyard, and knowing nothing at all about the world of
people, could have written such a book as _Jane Eyre_, seems a miracle.
She was a genius," she finished with an envious sigh.

Miss Amesbury looked keenly at Migwan. "I think," she observed shrewdly,
"that