sisterly feeling
in your relations to your mother, and I hope there will be. I think she
has a high opinion of your good sense and judgment, and I don't expect
that she will have any cause to change her opinion.'

Jacinth sat silent for a moment or two. She seemed to be thinking
deeply; her eyes were fixed on the fire, where the wooden logs were
throwing out brilliant gleams of varying colours, reflected on the
bright brasses of the grate and fender.

'How pretty everything here always is!' she said at last. 'Even to the
burning wood. Look, Lady Myrtle, it is blue and purple and even green.'

'They are old ship logs,' her friend replied. 'It is the brine in them
that makes the colours.'

'Oh dear,' said Jacinth again with a little sigh, 'how I should love a
pretty home. Lady Myrtle, I am afraid you will be shocked at me, but do
you know I sometimes almost feel I would rather papa and mamma went back
to India next year than that we should have to go to live at that
horrible dingy Barmettle.'

Lady Myrtle was not _shocked_. Still, she was too unselfish by nature
herself not to be quick to check any symptoms of an opposite character
in one she really cared for, glad though she was to have Jacinth's full
confidence.

'I think you would bear such a trial as that, readily and cheerfully, if
it were for your father and mother's good,' she said. 'And after all,
where we live is not of the importance that I daresay it seems to you.
Some of the truly happiest people I have ever known have been so in
spite of the most uncongenial surroundings you can imagine.'

'I'm not as good as that,' said Jacinth in a melancholy voice. 'I can't
bear ugly, messy places; above all, messy, untidy places make me
perfectly cross and miserable.'

Lady Myrtle could not help laughing a little at her tragic tone.

'I don't see that, even if you had to live at Barmettle, your home need
be ugly and untidy,' she said.

'I don't know. I've been thinking a good deal about it,' Jacinth
replied. 'You see, mamma will have been so long in India that she will
have got out of English ways. She must be accustomed to lots of servants
and to have everything done for her. I'm afraid it will be very
difficult and uncomfortable.'

'But she would have you and Frances to help her,' said Lady Myrtle. 'At
least--no, dear Jacinth, you really must not anticipate troubles that
may never, that I trust _will_ never come.'

Then she hesitated and stopped short, an