much about eating, you know.'

As she uttered this remark, she felt a jewel producing itself in some
mysterious way from the tip of her tongue, and saw it fall with a
clatter into her plate. 'I'll pretend not to notice anything,' she
thought.

'Hullo!' exclaimed Alick, pausing in the act of mastication, 'I
say--_Prissie_!'

'If you ask mother, I'm sure she will tell you that it is most
ill-mannered to speak with your mouth full,' said Priscilla, her speech
greatly impeded by an immense emerald.

'I like that!' exclaimed her rude brother; 'who's speaking with their
mouth full _now_?'

'"_Their_" is not grammar, dear,' was Priscilla's only reply to this
taunt, as she delicately ejected a pearl, 'you should say _her_ mouth
full.' For Priscilla's grammar was as good as her principles.

'But really, Priscilla, dear,' said her mother, who felt some
embarrassment at so novel an experience as being obliged to find fault
with her little daughter, 'you should not eat sweets just before dinner,
and--and couldn't you get rid of them in some other manner?'

'Sweets!' cried Priscilla, considerably annoyed at being so
misunderstood, 'they are not _sweets,_ mother. Look!' And she offered to
submit one for inspection.

'If I may venture to express an opinion,' observed her father, 'I would
rather that a child of mine should suck sweets than coloured beads, and
in either case I object to having them prominently forced upon my
notice at meal-times. But I daresay I'm wrong. I generally am.'

'Papa is quite right, dear,' said her mother, 'it _is_ such a dangerous
habit--suppose you were to swallow one, you know! Put them in the fire,
like a good girl, and go on with your dinner.'

Priscilla rose without a word, her cheeks crimsoning, and dropped the
pearl, ruby, and emerald, with great accuracy, into the very centre of
the fire. This done, she returned to her seat, and went on with her
dinner in silence, though her feelings prevented her from eating very
much.

'If they choose to think my pearls are only beads, or jujubes, or
acidulated drops,' she said to herself, bitterly, 'I won't waste any
more on them, that's all! I won't open my lips again, except to say
quite ordinary things--so _there_!'

If Priscilla had not been such a very good little girl, you might almost
have thought she was in a temper; but she was not; her feelings were
wounded, that was all, which is quite a different thing.

That afternoon, her aunt Margar