ys do the things
I ought to do."

"No; I know you do not. But will you do _that_ thing, which you will
think you ought to do, when you have heard me, and understood what I
say, the next time the Band has a meeting?"

Matilda stood silent, her hand still in Mr. Richmond's.

"What's the matter?"

"Perhaps I shall not want to do it," she said, looking up frankly.

"I ask you to do it all the same."

Matilda did not move, and now her face showed great perplexity.

"Well?" said Mr. Richmond, smiling at last.

"Perhaps I _cannot_ do it, Mr. Richmond?"

"Then, if you think you cannot do it, will you come and tell me?"

Matilda hesitated and pondered and hesitated.

"Do you wish it very much, Mr. Richmond?" she said, looking up
appealingly into his face.

"I do wish it very much."

"Then I will!" said Matilda, with a sigh.

He nodded, shook her hand, and turned away with quick steps. Matilda
went in and climbed the stairs to the room she and Maria shared
together.

"What were you talking to Mr. Richmond so long about?" said Maria.

"I wasn't talking to Mr. Richmond. He was talking to me."

"What's the difference? But I wish he would talk to Ailie Swan; she
wants it, I know. That girl is too much!"

"What has she done?"

"Oh, _you_ don't know; she isn't in your set. _I_ know. She's just
disagreeable. I think people ought to be civil, if they are ever so
good."

"I thought good people were civil always."

"Shows you don't know much."

"Isn't Ailie Swan civil?"

"I do not call it civility. What do you think, Tilly? I asked her if my
South America wasn't good? and she said she thought it was not. Isn't
that civility?"

"What did you ask her for?"

"Because! I knew my South America was good."

"Let me see it."

"Nonsense! You do not know the first thing about it." But she gave her
little sister the sheet on which the map was drawn. Matilda took it to
a table under the window, where the dying light from the western sky
fell brightest; and putting both elbows on the table and her head in
her hands, studied the map.

"Where is the atlas?"

"What do you want of the atlas?"

"I want to see if it is like."

"It is like, of course, child."

"I can't tell without seeing," Matilda persisted. And Maria grumblingly
brought the atlas, open at the map in question. Matilda took it and
studied anew.

"It is getting dark," said she at length. "But your South America is
crooked, Maria."

"It isn't!" s