. Come to see you, Bessie; you are having quite a levee. I
shall be off now." Miss Buff rose, and Miss Wort with her, but before
they went there were some rallying speeches to be exchanged between Miss
Buff and the quaint old bachelor. They were the most friendly of
antagonists, and their animosity was not skin-deep. "Have you seen Lady
Latimer since the last school committee, Mr. Phipps?" asked Miss Buff,
in mischievous allusion to their latest difference of opinion.

"No. I always keep as far as possible out of her ladyship's way."

"If you had her spirit of charity you would not avow it."

"You take the name of charity in vain. 'It is the beginning, the excuse,
and the pretext for a thousand usurpations.' Poverty has a new terror
now-a-days in the officiousness of women with nothing to do but play at
charity."

Miss Wort shook her head and shut her eyes, as if to stave off the shock
of this profanity. Miss Buff only laughed the more merrily, and declared
that Mr. Phipps himself had as much to answer for as anybody in
Beechhurst, if charity was a sin.

"I can charge myself with very few acts of charity," said he grimly. "I
am not out of bonds to bare justice."

Mr. Phipps was in his sarcastic vein, and shot many a look askance at
Cinderella in the sofa corner, with her plumed velvet hat lying on a
chair beside her. She had been transformed into a most beautiful
princess, there was no denying that. He had heard a confidential whisper
respecting Mr. Cecil Burleigh, and had seen that gentleman--a very
handsome personage to play the part of prince in the story. Mr. Phipps
had curiosity, discernment, and a great shrewdness. Bessie had a happy
face, and was enjoying her day in her old home; but she would never be
Cinderella in the nursery any more--never the little sunburnt gypsy who
delighted to wander in the Forest with the boys, and was nowhere so well
pleased as when she might run wild. He told her so; he wanted to prove
her temper since her exaltation.

"I shall never be only twelve years old again, and that's true," said
Bessie, with a sportive defiance exceedingly like her former self. "But
I may travel--who knows how far and wide?--and come home browner than
any berry. Grandpapa was a traveller once; so was my uncle Laurence in
pursuit of antiquities; and my poor uncle Frederick--you know he was
lost in the Baltic? The gypsy wildness is in the blood, but I shall
always come back to the Forest to rest."

"Sh