iasm of a Londoner for the country, till she had a valuable
little museum of her own gathering, and was a handbook for the county
curiosities. Star, bird, flower, and insect, were more than resources,
they were the friends of her lonely life, and awoke many a keen feeling
of interest, many an aspiration of admiring adoration that carried her
through her dreary hours. And though Miss Fennimore thought her science
puerile, her credulity extensive, and her observations inaccurate, yet
she deemed even this ladylike dabbling worthy of respect as an element of
rational pleasure and self-training, and tried to make Bertha respect it,
and abstain from inundating Miss Charlecote with sesquipedalian names for
systems and families, and, above all, from her principal delight, setting
the two ladies together by the ears, by appealing to her governess to
support her abuse of Linnaeus as an old 'dictionary-maker,' or for some
bold geological theory that poor Honor was utterly unprepared to swallow.

Bertha was somewhat like the wren, who, rising on the eagle's head,
thought itself the monarch of the birds, but Honor was by no means
convinced that she was not merely blindfolded on the back of Clavileno
Aligero. There was neither love nor admiration wasted between Honor and
Miss Fennimore, and Phoebe preferred their being apart. She enjoyed her
Sunday afternoons, short enough, for school must not be neglected, but
Honor shyly acceded to Phoebe's entreaty to be allowed to sit by her
class and learn by her teaching.

It was an effort. Honor shrank from exposing her own misty metaphors,
hesitating repetitions, and trivial queries to so clear a head, trained
in distinct reasoning, but it was the very teaching that the scientific
young lady most desired, and she treasured up every hint, afterwards
pursuing the subject with the resolution to complete the chain of
evidence, and asking questions sometimes rather perplexing to Honor,
accustomed as she was to take everything for granted. Out came
authorities, and Honor found herself examining into the grounds of her
own half-knowledge, gaining fresh ideas, correcting old ones, and
obtaining subjects of interest for many an hour after her young friend
had left her.

While, at home, Phoebe, after running the gauntlet of Bertha's diversion
at her putting herself to school, when Scripture lessons were long ago
done with, would delight Maria with long murmuring discourses, often
stories about