d a poke bonnet smoking a
cigarette. I think it must be so, because dear mother used to be the
most easy-going woman in the world in her ordinary clothes, and would let
papa smoke all over the house. But about once every three weeks she
would put on a hideous old-fashioned black silk dress, that looked as if
Queen Elizabeth must have slept in it during one of those seasons when
she used to go about sleeping anywhere, and then we all had to sit up.
'Look out, ma's got her black silk dress on,' came to be a regular
formula. We could always make papa take us out for a walk or a drive by
whispering it to him."

"I can never bear to look at those pictures of by-gone fashions," said
the Old Maid, "I see the by-gone people in them, and it makes me feel as
though the faces that we love are only passing fashions with the rest. We
wear them for a little while upon our hearts, and think so much of them,
and then there comes a time when we lay them by, and forget them, and
newer faces take their place, and we are satisfied. It seems so sad."

"I wrote a story some years ago," remarked the Minor Poet, "about a young
Swiss guide, who was betrothed to a laughing little French peasant girl."

"Named Suzette," interrupted the Girton Girl. "I know her. Go on."

"Named Jeanne," corrected the Poet, "the majority of laughing French
girls, in fiction, are named Suzette, I am well aware. But this girl's
mother's family was English. She was christened Jeanne after an aunt
Jane, who lived in Birmingham, and from whom she had expectations."

"I beg your pardon," apologised the Girton Girl, "I was not aware of that
fact. What happened to her?"

"One morning, a few days before the date fixed for the wedding," said the
Minor Poet, "she started off to pay a visit to a relative living in the
village, the other side of the mountain. It was a dangerous track,
climbing half-way up the mountain before it descended again, and skirting
more than one treacherous slope, but the girl was mountain born and bred,
sure-footed as a goat, and no one dreamed of harm."

"She went over, of course," said the Philosopher, "those sure-footed
girls always do."

"What happened," replied the Minor Poet, "was never known. The girl was
never seen again."

"And what became of her lover?" asked the Girton Girl. "Was he, when
next year's snow melted, and the young men of the village went forth to
gather Edelweiss, wherewith to deck their sweethearts, found