would find between the three seas. I
have cried with loud publicity in full school-room conclave; I have
cried with silent privacy in bed. I have cried over the jackdaw. I have
cried over the bear. I have not cried over Vick, as I am to take her
with me. To-day we have _all_ cried--boys and all; and have moistened
the bun-loaf and the gooseberry-jam at tea with our tears. Our spirits
being now temporarily revived, I am undergoing the operation of trying
my wedding-dress. I am having a private rehearsal, in fact, in mother's
boudoir, with only mother, Barbara, and the maid, for audience.

"Mine is the most hopeless kind of ugliness," say I, with an admirable
dispassionateness, as if I were talking of some one else, as, armed in
full panoply, I stand staring at my white reflection in a long mirror
let into the wall--staring at myself from top to toe--from the highest
jasmine star of my wreath to the lowest edge of my Brussels flounce. "If
I were very fat, I might fine down; if I were very thin, I might plump
up; if I were very red, I might grow pale; if I were--hush! here are the
boys. I would not for worlds that they should see me!"

So saying, I run behind the folding-screen--the screen which, through so
many winter evenings, we have adorned with gay and ingenious pictures,
and which, after having worked openly at it under her nose for a year
and a half, we presented to mother _as a surprise_, on her last
birthday.

"Come out, ostrich!" cries Algy, laughing. "Do you suppose that you are
hidden? Did it never occur to you that we could see your reflection in
the glass?"

Thus adjured, I reissue forth.

"Did you ever see such a fool as I look?" say I, feeling very sneaky,
and going through a few uncouth antics to disguise my confusion.

"Talk of _me_ being a Brat," cries the Brat, triumphantly. "I am not
half such a brat as you are! You look about ten years old!"

"Mark my words!" cries Bobby. "Wherever you go, on the Continent, you
will be taken for a good little girl making a tour with her grandpapa!"

Bobby is speaking at the top of his voice; as, indeed, we have all of us
rather a bad habit of doing. Bobby has the most excuse for it, as, being
a sailor, I suppose that he has to bellow a good deal at the
blue-jackets. In the present case, he has _one_ more listener than he
thinks. Sir Roger is among us. The door has been left ajar, and he,
hearing the merry clamor, and having always the _entree_ to mother's
roo