articular, except
talking. She expatiated largely, for Lucy's benefit, upon the classes
and masters in the fashionable school to which her cousin was to
accompany her, giving her various scraps of information respecting her
future classmates, with a list of their foibles and peculiarities
amusingly described, but rather wearisome to a stranger. Mrs. Brooke
questioned Lucy about her previous studies, looking doubtful when she
heard of Latin and mathematics, and saying she was afraid "she had
been made a little of a blue." At her aunt's request, she sat down at
the handsome piano, and rather nervously got through a simple air, the
only one she knew by heart. She felt she had not done herself justice,
and Stella said apologetically, "You know she never had any teacher
but Mrs. Steele, and she has no style."

Lucy's cheek flushed at the disparaging remark, but Mrs. Brooke only
said, "I hope you will play better than that, my dear, when you have
had Signor Goldoni for awhile. Do you sing?"

"Only hymns, aunt. We often sing them on Sundays at home."

"Well, if you have anything of a voice, you will soon do better than
that. Any one can sing hymns."

Lucy made no reply, but she privately thought that very few could sing
them like her Aunt Mary. Then, recollecting that Stella had told her
how well Sophy played and sang, she turned rather timidly to her with
the request, "Won't you sing, Cousin Sophy?"

"Do, Sophy," added her mother and Stella, both at once.

But Sophy, reclining in a luxurious easy-chair near the fire, and
absorbed in a sensational novel, was too comfortable to think of
moving.

"I really can't just now," she said rather coldly. "I'm tired, and I'm
just at the most interesting place in this book."

"Sophy never will sing to please any one but herself and--_some_
people," said Stella mischievously. "And then, sometimes, if she takes
the notion, there's no stopping her. Now, if a certain person I know
were here--"

Ada laughed. Sophy just said haughtily, "I'll be much obliged to you,
Stella, not to disturb me;" at which Stella, with mock gravity, put
her finger on her lip.

"Well, I am tired," Mrs. Brooke at last said, rising; "and I am sure
Lucy must be so too. Lucy, I advise you to go to bed at once; and,
Stella, don't stay in your cousin's room talking, and don't wake Amy,
if she is asleep."

It seemed very strange to Lucy that the family circle should break up
for the night without the united a