swinging in a low rocker, and
looking so pretty that I was quite proud of her as an ornament to our
front veranda.

"I dunno," she said, "unless it was the exercise for sitting perfectly
still on a row of chairs. A nun goes behind us and drops a big book or
something, and any girl that jumps gets a bad mark."

"Capital!" I cried; "no wonder you have learned repose of manner."

Thus encouraged, the girl continued:

"Then we have little parties and receptions, and we have to converse
with the nuns and with each other, and anybody that mentions one of the
three D's gets a bad mark."

"The three D's?"

"Yes, sir--Dress, Disease, and Domestics."

"Hear this, Belle," I said, laughing, as my wife took the rocking chair
on the other side of me; "fancy any collection of women being obliged to
steer clear of the three D's!"

"You should ask Mary about her studies," was the severe reply. "We were
much pleased with your letters."

"Yes, mawm; Sister Stella was always very good about that; helped me
with the big words, and often wrote the whole thing out for me.
Sometimes I had to copy it two or three times before I could please
her."

Belle hastily changed the subject. "Let Mr. Gemmell hear that piece you
recited to me this morning."

I am no judge of elocution, but the general effect of the young girl
standing there in the arch of the veranda, a clematis-wreathed post on
either side, and her face, with its delicate coloring, turned toward the
golden twilight, was pleasing in the extreme.

"She'll maybe be famous some day," said Belle, when Mary had discreetly
retired. "She is far quicker at learning verses off by heart than she is
at reading them."

"Still, to be a successful elocutionist nowadays one has to be
thoroughly well educated, and Mary is too late in beginning."

"You can't tell. She's got the appearance, and that's half the battle."

"With us, perhaps; but remember, we are not capable critics, even though
one of us is a Theosophist."

"Laugh as you like, Dave. Theosophy satisfies me, because it explains
some things in my own nature that I never could understand before."

"It may be that you are too soon satisfied. That's the way with all new
movements--one story is good till another is told. Your
great-granddaughter will smile at the credulity of your ideas on this
very subject."

"She can smile, and so can you. We don't pretend to know everything; we
only hope that we are on the right road to le