ntance who owned to a meek little buttercup his habit of
carrying a book in his pocket for reading in leisure hours. "Ah, yes,"
replied the eager little auditor, with a hush of real awe in her
voice--"the Bible, of course! Unluckily," it was the _Physiologie du
Gout_.

Still more does the sister of a couple of seasons wonder at the ardour
and fidelity of buttercup friendships. In after-life men have friends
and women have lovers. The home and the husband and the child absorb the
whole tenderness of a woman where they only temper and moderate the old
external affections of her spouse. But then girl-friendship is a much
more vivid and far more universal thing than friendship among boys. The
one means, in nine cases out of ten, an accident of neighbourhood in
school that fades with the next remove, or a partnership in some
venture, or a common attachment to some particular game. But the school
friendship of a girl is a passionate idolatry and devotion of friend
for friend. Their desks are full of little gifts to each other. They
have pet names that no strange ear may know, and hidden photographs that
no strange eye may see. They share all the innocent secrets of their
hearts, they are fondly interested in one another's brothers, they plan
subtle devices to wear the same ribbons and to dress their hair in the
same fashion. No amount of affection ever made a boy like the business
of writing his friend a letter in the holidays, but half the charm of
holidays to a girl lies in the letters she gets and the letters she
sends. Nothing save friendship itself is more sacred to girlhood than a
friend's letter; nothing more exquisite than the pleasure of stealing
from the breakfast-table to kiss it and read it, and then tie it up with
the rest that lie in the nook that nobody knows but the one pet brother.
The pet brother is as necessary an element in buttercup life as the
friend. He is generally the dullest, the most awkward, the most silent
of the family group. He takes all this sisterly devotion as a matter of
course, and half resents it as a matter of boredom. He is fond of
informing his adorer that he hates girls, that they are always kissing
and crying, and that they can't play cricket. The buttercup rushes away
to pour out her woes to her little nest in the woods, and hurries back
to worship as before. Girlhood indeed is the one stage of feminine
existence in which woman has brothers. Her first season out digs a gulf
between t