of talking with tongues about the weather, and the flowers,
and the music; while grey eyes looked into blue, and said unutterable
things. Oh, the beauty of the sky seen through those rosy branches!
Oh, the glory of the sun! There had never been such a summer day
before. ... Elma trembled at the remembrance, and then blushed at her
own audacity. It was terrible to have to acknowledge such things to
one's inmost heart, but to put them into words--! She pursed her lips,
and looked demurely scandalised by her companion's plain speaking.

"Do you know, Cornelia,"--she had been commanded to use the Christian
name, but it still came with a certain amount of hesitation--"if I were
you I would not talk like that before your aunt. We--we don't do it
over here! It is not considered--nice--for a girl to talk about young
men."

Cornelia smiled slowly. Her beautiful lips curved upwards at the
corner, giving an air of impish mischief to her face. She nodded her
head three times over, and hitched a shoulder under the muslin gown.

"We-ell?" she drawled in her most pronounced accent, "if I've got to
think of 'em, I might as well talk of 'em, and I'm _bound_ to think of
'em!" She relaxed the grasp of her knees, and lay back against the
trunk of a tree, chuckling softly in retrospective triumph. "I've had
such heaps of fun! I just love to carry on, and have half-a-dozen boys
quarrelling over me, and hustling to get the first chance. I've had as
many as ten bouquets before a ball, and I wore an eleventh, which I'd
gotten for myself, and they were all clean crazed to find out who'd sent
it. Poppar says I'll be an old maid yet, but it won't be for want of
asking. There's one young man who's just daft about me--he's young, and
he's lovely, and he's got ten million and a hef dollars, and I've
_tried_ to love him." She sighed despairing. "I've tried hard, but I
_ken't_!"

Elm a struggled between disapproval, curiosity, and a shocking mingling
of something else, which was not, could not possibly be, _envy_ of such
adventures! The lingering doubt served to add severity to her
indictment.

"It's very wicked to flirt!"

Once again Cornelia flashed her impish smile.

"It's vurry nice! I don't see a mite of use in being young if you ken't
have some fun. You grow old fast enough, and then there's nothing else
to it but to sit round and preach. Your mother and Aunt Soph have just
_got_ to preach, but I wouldn't start yet aw