ng
into the room where Mrs. Corliss sat, busily engaged in hemming some
new table-linen, and throwing herself down on a low hassock at her
feet, and laying down her crutch beside her--"it is perfectly awful."

"Why," said Mrs. Corliss, smoothing the nut-brown curls back from the
child's flushed face, "I should think you would be very pleased. They
were your neighbors when you were down in Florida, were they not?"

"Yes," replied the little girl, frowning, "but I don't like them one
bit. Bess and Gertie--that's the two eldest ones, make me think of
those stiff pictures in the gay trailing dresses in the magazines. Eve
is nice, but she's a Tom-boy."

"A wh--at!" cried Mrs. Corliss.

"She's a Tom-boy, mamma always said; she romps, and has no manners."

"They will be your neighbors when you go South again--so I suppose
your brother thought of that when he invited them."

"He never dreamed of it," cried Birdie; "it was Miss Pluma's doings."

"Hush, child, don't talk so loud," entreated the old housekeeper; "she
might hear you."

"I don't care," cried Birdie. "I don't like her anyhow, and she knows
it. When Rex is around she is as sweet as honey to me, and calls me
'pretty little dear,' but when Rex isn't around she scarcely notices
me, and I _hate_ her--yes, I do."

Birdie clinched her little hands together venomously, crying out the
words in a shrill scream.

"Birdie," cried Mrs. Corliss, "you _must not_ say such hard, cruel
things. I have heard you say, over and over again, you liked Mr.
Hurlhurst, and you must remember Pluma is his daughter, and she is to
be your brother's wife. You must learn to speak and think kindly of
her."

"I never shall like her," cried Birdie, defiantly, "and I am sure Mr.
Hurlhurst don't."

"Birdie!" ejaculated the good lady in a fright, dropping her scissors
and spools in consternation; "let me warn you not to talk so again;
if Miss Pluma was to once hear you, you would have a sorry enough time
of it all your after life. What put it into your head Mr. Hurlhurst
did not like his own daughter?"

"Oh, lots of things," answered Birdie. "When I tell him how pretty
every one says she is, he groans, and says strange things about fatal
beauty, which marred all his young life, and ever so many things I
can't understand, and his face grows so hard and so stern I am almost
afraid of him."

"He is thinking of Pluma's mother," thought Mrs. Corliss--but she made
no answer.

"He likes to t