to meet them. I can stand a
bucketful of feeling drawn out of me, but I hate to let it waste away in
a drop here and a driblet there about nothing at all. Now I will just
tell you, girls--I once went to see a woman who had lost fifteen hundred
a year, all at a blow, without a bit of warning. What she had to say
was--`The Lord has taken it, and He knows best. I can trust Him to care
for me.' Well, about a week afterwards, I had a visit from another
woman, who had let a pan boil over, and had spoilt a lot of jam. She
wanted me to say she was the most tried creature since Adam. And I
could not, girls--I really could not. I have not the slightest doubt
there have been a million women worse tried since the battle of Prague,
never mention Adam. As to Amelia Bracewell, who carries her fan as if
it were a sceptre, and slurs her r's like a Londoner, silly chit! I
have hardly any patience with her. Charlotte's bad enough, but Amelia!
My word, she takes some standing, I can tell you!"

Now, I always admired the way Amelia sounds her r's, or, I suppose I
ought to say, the way she does not sound them. It is so soft and
pretty. Then she writes poetry,--all about the blue sea and the silver
moon, or else the gleaming sunbeams and the hoary hills--so grand! I
never read anything so beautiful as Amelia's poetry. She told me once
that a gentleman from London, who was fourth cousin to a peer of some
sort, had told her she wrote as well as Mr Pope. Only think!

Charlotte is as different as she can be. Her notion of things is to go
down to the stable and saddle her own horse, and scamper all over the
country, all by herself. Father says she is a fine girl, but she will
break her neck some day. My Aunt Kezia says, Saint Paul told women to
be keepers at home, and she thinks that page must have dropped out of
Charlotte's Bible. She does some other things, too, that I do not fancy
she would care for my Aunt Kezia to hear. She calls her father "the old
gentleman," and sometimes "the old boy." I do not know what my Aunt
Kezia would say, if she did hear it.

I wonder what Flora Drummond is like now. I used to think she had not
much in her. Perhaps it was only that she did not let it come out.
However, I shall have a chance of finding out soon; for she and Angus
are coming to stay with us, on his way to York, where his father is
sending him on some kind of business. I do not know what it is, and I
don't care. Business i