e laid waste before any one came to the rescue. When
a picnic or a tea-party was in store, if Madam Liberality did not
catch cold, so as to hinder her from going, she was pretty sure to
have a quinsy from fatigue or wet feet afterwards. When she had a
treat, she paid for the pleasurable excitement by a head-ache, just
as when she ate sweet things they gave her toothache.

But, if her luck was less than other people's, her courage and good
spirits were more than common. She could think with pleasure about
the treat when she had forgotten the head-ache.

One side of her face would look fairly cheerful when the other was
obliterated by a flannel bag of hot camomile flowers, and the whole
was redolent of every possible domestic remedy for toothache, from
oil of cloves and creosote to a baked onion in the ear. No
sufferings abated her energy for fresh exploits, or quenched the
hope that cold, and damp, and fatigue would not hurt her "this
time."

In the intervals of wringing out hot flannels for her quinsy she
would amuse herself by devising a desert island expedition, on a
larger and possibly a damper scale than hitherto, against the time
when she should be out again.

It is a very old simile, but Madam Liberality really was like a
cork rising on the top of the very wave of ill-luck that had
swallowed up her hopes.

Her little white face and undaunted spirit bobbed up after each
mischance or malady as ready and hopeful as ever.

Some of the indoor amusements over which Julie exercised great
influence were our theatricals. Her powers of imitation were strong;
indeed, my mother's story of "Joachim the Mimic" was written, when
Julie was very young, rather to check this habit which had early
developed in her. She always took what may be called the "walking
gentleman's" part in our plays. Miss Corner's Series came first, and
then Julie was usually a Prince; but after we advanced to farces, her
most successful character was that of the commercial traveller,
Charley Beeswing, in "Twenty Minutes with a Tiger." "Character" parts
were what she liked best to take, and in later years, when aiding in
private theatricals at Aldershot Camp, the piece she most enjoyed was
"Helping Hands," in which she acted Tilda, with Captain F.G. Slade,
R.A., as Shockey, and Major Ewing as the blind musician.

The last time she