ose Bonchamp girls--Mytton is their name--so entirely
adoring her.'

'I am sorry she has taken up with those Myttons,' said Miss Doyle.

'So am I,' answered Susan.

'You too, Susie!' exclaimed Bessie--'you, who never have a word to
say against any one!'

'I daresay they are very good girls,' said Susan; 'but they are--'

'Underbred,' put in Miss Doyle in the pause. 'And how they
flatter!'

'I think the raptures are genuine gush,' said Bessie; 'but that is
so much the worse for Arthurine. Is there any positive harm in the
family beyond the second-rate tone?'

'It was while you were away,' said Susan; 'but their father somehow
behaved very ill about old Colonel Mytton's will--at least papa
thought so, and never wished us to visit them.'

'He was thought to have used unfair influence on the old gentleman,'
said Miss Doyle; 'but the daughters are so young that probably they
had no part in it. Only it gives a general distrust of the family;
and the sons are certainly very undesirable young men.'

'It is unlucky,' said Bessie, 'that we can do nothing but inflict a
course of snubbing, in contrast with a course of admiration.'

'I am sure I don't want to snub her,' said good-natured Susan.
'Only when she does want to do such queer things, how can it be
helped?'

It was quite true, Mrs. and Miss Arthuret had been duly called upon
and invited about by the neighbourhood; but it was a scanty one, and
they had not wealth and position enough to compensate for the girl's
self-assertion and literary pretensions. It was not a superior or
intellectual society, and, as the Rockstone Merrifields laughingly
declared, it was fifty years behindhand, and where Bessie
Merrifield, for the sake of the old stock and her meek bearing of
her success--nay, her total ignoring of her literary honours--would
be accepted. Arthurine, half her age, and a newcomer, was disliked
for the pretensions which her mother innocently pressed on the
world. Simplicity and complacency were taken for arrogance, and the
mother and daughter were kept upon formal terms of civility by all
but the Merrifields, who were driven into discussion and opposition
by the young lady's attempts at reformations in the parish.

It was the less wonder that they made friends where their intimacy
was sought and appreciated. There was nothing underbred about
themselves; both were ladies ingrain, though Arthurine was abrupt
and sometimes obtrusive, but they had not liv