r; Esther giving
however a side glance now and then at her companion.

"You have not been long in town?" she said then, by way of beginning.

"Only three weeks."

"Of course then you are quite a stranger. It is very disagreeable,
isn't it, to be among a whole set of people that you don't know?"
Esther said it with a little turn of her pretty head, that was--Matilda
could not tell just what it was. It shewed the young lady very much at
her ease in society, and it was not quite natural; that was all she
could make out. Matilda answered, that she did not find anything
disagreeable. Esther opened her eyes a little wider.

"Do you know all about the arrangements to-night?" she whispered.

"I suppose I do."

"Will there be dancing?"

"I have heard nothing about dancing," said Matilda. "I don't think
there'll be much time for it. I don't see how there can be."

"Are you very fond of dancing?" Esther asked, with her eyes at the
further end of the next room.

Matilda was conscious of feeling ashamed of her answer. Nevertheless
she answered. "I do not know how to dance."

"Not dance!" said Esther, with a new glance at her. "Did you never
dance? O there's nothing I care for at parties but to dance. And there
are just enough here to night; not a crowd. Aunt Zara will send you to
dancing-school, I suppose. But it isn't so pleasant to begin to learn
when you are so old."

"_Aunt_ Zara!" said Matilda. "Norton did not say you were his cousin."

"Norton's head was too full," said Esther with another movement of her
head that struck Matilda very much; it was quite like a grown-up young
lady; and gave Matilda the notion that she thought a good deal of
Norton. "Yes; we are cousins; that is why he told me to take care of
you."

Matilda was tempted to say that Norton would save her that trouble as
soon as he was at leisure to take it upon himself; but she did not.
Instead, she asked Esther how old _she_ had been when she began to take
dancing lessons?

"I don't know; three and a half, I believe."

The deficiency of Matilda's own education pressed upon her heavily. She
was a little afraid to go on, for fear of laying bare some other want.

"Yes," said Esther after another interval of being absorbed in what was
going on in the next room;--"yes; of course, you know I began to learn
to dance as soon as I began to wear--stays," she uttered in a whisper,
and went on aloud. "The two things together. O yes; I was almost four
yea