med with all
sorts of nonsense not fit for them.'

As to the Sunday school. Mother and the curate take care of that. I'm
sure, if you like it, you can have my class, for I always have a
headache there, and very often I can't go. Only May pegs away at it,
and she won't let me have the boys, who are the only jolly ones,
because she says I spoil them. But you must be my friend--mind,
Nuttie, not May's, for we are nearer the same age. When is your
birthday? You must put it down in my book!'

Nuttie, who had tolerable experience of making acquaintance with new
girls, was divided between a sense of Blanche's emptiness, and the
warmth excited by her friendliness, as well as of astonishment at all
she heard and saw.

Crossing the straggling, meandering village street, the cousins entered
the grounds of the Rectory, an irregular but well-kept building of the
soft stone of the country, all the garden front of it a deep verandah
that was kept open in summer, but closed with glass frames in the
winter--flower-beds lying before it, and beyond a lawn where the young
folk were playing at the inevitable lawn-tennis.

Margaret was not so pretty as Blanche, but had a more sensible face,
and her welcome to Ursula was civil but reserved. Rosalind and Adela
were bright little things, in quite a different style from their
half-sisters, much lighter in complexion and promising to be handsomer
women. They looked full of eagerness and curiosity at the new cousin,
whom Blanche set down on a bank, and proceeded to instruct in the
mysteries of the all-important game by comments and criticisms on the
players.

As soon as Mark and Adela had come out conquerors, Ursula was called on
to take her first lesson. May resigned her racket, saying she had
something to do, and walked off the field, and carrying off with her
Adela, who, as Blanche said, 'had a spine,' and was ordered to lie down
for an hour every afternoon. The cheerfulness with which she went
spoke well for the training of the family.

Nuttie was light-footed and dexterous handed, and accustomed to active
amusements, so that, under the tuition of her cousins, she became a
promising pupil, and thawed rapidly, even towards Mark.

She was in the midst of her game when the two mothers came out, for the
drive had been extended all round the park, under pretext of showing it
to its new mistress, but really to give the Canoness an opportunity of
judging of her in a tete-a-tete. Ye