heir sister and "the boys" of the family that nothing can fill
up. Henceforth the latter are useful to get tickets for her, to carry
her shawls, to drive her to Goodwood or to Lord's. In the mere fetching
and carrying business they sink into the general ruck of cousins,
grumbling only a little more than cousins usually do at the luck that
dooms them to hew wood and draw water for the belle of the season. But
in the pure equality of earlier days the buttercup shares half the games
and all the secrets of the boys about her, and brotherhood and
sisterhood are very real things indeed.

Unluckily the holidays pass away, and the buttercup passes away like the
holidays. There is a strange humour about the subtle gradations by which
girlhood passes out of all this free, genial, irreflective life into the
self-consciousness, the reserve, the artificiality of womanhood. It is
the sudden discovery of a new sense of enjoyment that first whirls the
buttercup out of her purely family affections. She laughs at the worship
of her new adorer. She is as far as Dian herself from any return of it;
but the sense of power is awakened, and she has a sort of Puckish pride
in bringing her suitor to her feet. Nobody is so exacting, so
capricious, so uncertain, so fascinating as a buttercup, because no one
is so perfectly free from love. The first touch of passion renders her
more exacting and more charming than ever. She resents the suspicion of
a tenderness whose very novelty scares her, and she visits her
resentment on her worshipper. If he enjoys a kind farewell overnight, he
atones for it by the coldest greeting in the morning. There are days
when the buttercup runs amuck among her adorers, days of snubbing and
sarcasm and bitterness. The poor little bird beats savagely against the
wires that are closing her round. And then there are days of pure
abandon and coquetry and fun. The buttercup flirts, but she flirts in
such an open and ingenuous fashion that nobody is a bit the worse for
it. She tells you the fun she had overnight with that charming young
fellow from Oxford, and you know that to-morrow she will be telling that
hated Guardsman what fun she has had with you. She is a little dazzled
with the wealth and profusion of the new life that is bursting on her,
and she wings her way from one charming flower to another with little
thought of more than a sip from each. Then there is a return of pure
girlhood, days in which the buttercup is sim