but
Margery thought it better not, and she is sure to be right. She always
is.

But we should have liked to ask Dr. Brown about it, if it had not been
rude, because we think a good deal of spots on our nails. All we know
about them is that you begin at your thumb, and count on to your
little finger, in this way,

"A Gift, a Beau,
A Friend, a Foe,
A Journey to go."

I like having a Beau, or a Friend; Margery likes a Gift or a Journey
to go. We neither of us like having Foes.

And it shows that it does come true, because Margery had a white spot
in the middle of her left little finger nail, just when our father's
old friend wrote to Grandmamma, for one of us to go and pay him a
visit; and Margery went, because she was the elder of the two.

I do not know how I bore parting with her, except with hoping that she
would enjoy herself, for she always had wanted so very much to have a
journey to go. But if she had been at home, so that I could have taken
her advice, I do not think I should have been so silly about the
Sunflowers and the Rushlight.

She says--"You'd have put on your slippers, and had a blanket round
you at least. But, oh, my dear Grace, you always are so rash!"

I did not know I was. I thought rash people were brave; and if I had
been brave, the Rushlight would never have come out of the roof. Still
Margery is sure to be right. I know I am very foolish and lonely
without her.

There are only two of us. Our father, and our mother, and our brother,
all died of fever, nearly five years ago. We shall never see them
again till we go to Paradise, and that is one reason why we wish to
try to be good and never to be naughty, so that we may be sure to see
them again.

I remember them a little. I remember being frightened by sitting so
high up on my father's shoulder, and then feeling so safe when I got
into my mother's lap; and I remember Robin's curls, and his taking my
woolly ball from me. I remember our black frocks coming in the
hair-trunk with brass nails to the sea-side, where Margery and I were
with our nurse, and her telling the landlady that our father and
mother and brother were all laid in one grave. And I remember going
home, and seeing the stone flags up in the yard, and a deep dark hole
near the pump, and thinking that was the grave; and how Margery found
me stark with fright, and knew better, and told me that the grave was
in the church-yard, and that this hole was only where work