s of her beauty, Hermione? Take care."

"Nay, you are cruel, Mamma, now. I should like to be handsome, but not
at the expense of being so very dull in spirits as poor Aurora often
is. But really, unless you have ever spent an hour alone with her, you
can form no idea of how tired one gets."

"What of, Hermione? of her face?"

"Oh no, not of her face; it is charming, and by the way you have just
put into my head how I may escape from being tired, even if I am left
alone with her for hours!"

"Nay, now you really puzzle me, my dear; I suggested nothing but
looking at her face."

"Ah, but as she is really and truly such a model of beauty, what do
you think of offering to make a likeness of her, Mamma? It will
delight her to sit and be looked at, even by me, in the country, and I
shall be so much pleased to have such a pleasant occupation. I am
quite reconciled to the idea of going."

And a note was written, and despatched accordingly.

"But," persisted Hermione, rising to sit near her Mother, "you do not
above half know Aurora. One would think she had been born in what is
called a 'four warnt way,' with nothing but cross roads about her.
Nothing is ever right. She is always either exhausted with the heat of
the sun, or frozen with cold, or the evening is so tedious, she wants
it to be bedtime, or if there is any unusual gaiety going on, she
quarrels with the same length of evening, because it is so intolerably
short; and, in short, she is never truly happy but when she is
surrounded by admirers, whether men or women. And this seems to me to
be a sad way of '_getting her time over_,' as the poor women say of
life. Ah, Mamma, it goes but too quickly."

"Aurora is indeed foolish," musingly ejaculated the Mother.

"Not altogether either, my dear Mother. She knows much; but the fault
is, she cares for nothing. She has got the carcase, as it were, of
knowledge and accomplishments; but the vivifying spirit is wanting.
You know yourself how well she plays and sings occasionally, if there
is a question of charming a room full of company. Yet there can be no
sentiment about her music after all, or it would be an equal pleasure
to her at other times. But really it almost makes me as discontented
with life as herself to hear her talk in unexcited hours. Turning over
my books one day, she said, 'You can never be either a poet or a
painter, or a Mozart or a philosopher, Hermione? what is the use of
all your labour and poking?