iful and funny. I love the whole of it: all the trees and
the fields, and the towns and the cities, and the prim old people and
the dear little children. I love the places--the old places because I
have known them so long, and the new places because I have never seen
them before; and I love the people best of all. I adore people, Felicia;
don't you?"

"No; I don't think that I do. Of course I like the people that I like;
but the others seem to me dreadfully uninteresting."

"But they are not; they are all frightfully interesting when once you
get to know them, and see what they really are made of inside. Outsides
may seem dull; but insides are always engrossing. That's why I always
love people when once I've seen them cry, because when they cry they are
themselves, and not any make-ups."

"How queer to like people because you have seen them cry!"

"Well, I do. I'd do anything for a person that I had seen cry; I would
really."

Felicia opened her large hazel eyes still wider. "What a strange idea!
It seems to me that you think too much about feelings and not enough
about principles."

"But thinking about feelings makes you think about principles; feelings
are the only things that ever make me think about principles at all."

After a few minutes' silence Elisabeth asked suddenly:

"What do you mean to do with your life when you leave here and take it
up?"

"I don't know. I suppose I shall fall in love and get married. Most
girls do. And I hope it will be with a clergyman, for I do so love
parish work."

"I don't think I want to get married," said Elisabeth slowly, "not even
to a clergyman."

"How queer of you! Why not?"

"Because I want to paint pictures and to become a great artist. I feel
there is such a lot in me that I want to say, and that I must say; and I
can only say it by means of pictures. It would be dreadful to die before
you had delivered the message that you had been sent into the world to
deliver, don't you think?"

"It would be more dreadful to die before you had found one man to whom
you would be everything, and who would be everything to you," replied
Felicia.

"Oh! I mean to fall in love, because everybody does, and I hate to be
behindhand with things; but I shall do it just as an experience, to make
me paint better pictures. I read in a book the other day that you must
fall in love before you can become a true artist; so I mean to do so.
But it won't be as important to me as my art,"