npronounceable name? Don't you
remember the faces she made when she sang? and the way she courtesied
and courtesied, till she cheated the foolish people into crying encore?
Look here, mamma--look here, Miss Garth!"

She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a sheet of
music, held it before her in the established concert-room position,
and produced an imitation of the unfortunate singer's grimaces and
courtesyings, so accurately and quaintly true to the original, that
her father roared with laughter; and even the footman (who came in
at that moment with the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and
committed the indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other side
of the door.

"Letters, papa. I want the key," said Magdalen, passing from the
imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard with
the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions.

Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head. Though his
youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was easy to see
where Magdalen's unmethodical habits came from.

"I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other keys,"
said Mr. Vanstone. "Go and look for it, my dear."

"You really should check Magdalen," pleaded Mrs. Vanstone, addressing
her husband when her daughter had left the room. "Those habits of
mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to you with a levity which it
is positively shocking to hear."

"Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating it,"
remarked Miss Garth. "She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a kind of
younger brother of hers."

"You are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind
allowances for Magdalen's high spirits--don't you?" said the quiet
Norah, taking her father's part and her sister's with so little show
of resolution on the surface that few observers would have been sharp
enough to detect the genuine substance beneath it.

"Thank you, my dear," said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. "Thank you for a
very pretty speech. As for Magdalen," he continued, addressing his wife
and Miss Garth, "she's an unbroken filly. Let her caper and kick in the
paddock to her heart's content. Time enough to break her to harness when
she gets a little older."

The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She unlocked the
post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a heap. Sorting
them gayly in less than a minute, she approached the