over the pillow, murmuring, “Oh, how soft, how beautiful!”

“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Gray, with an affectionate smile, which lacked a little of its usual brightness, “how did you get on yesterday with Ethel? She is such a quiet little thing that I’m sure you had no trouble.”

“No trouble!” Mary’s look spoke volumes. “I suspect there’s some frightful revelation coming now,” said Julia. “Did you irritate her, Flaxie?” For Ethel’s quietness was not always to be relied upon. She was like the still Lake Camerino of Italy, which so easily becomes muddy that the Italians have a proverb, “Do not disturb Camerino.” Dr. Gray often said to Mary, when he saw her domineering over her little sister, “Be careful! Do not disturb Camerino.”

“No, indeed, Ninny, I was very patient,” replied Mary with pride. “But for all that I had to punish her!”

Mrs. Gray turned her head on her pillow, and looked at Mary in astonishment.

“Did you think I gave you authority to punish your little sister? That would have been strange indeed! I merely said she and Philip were to obey you during the afternoon.”

Mary felt a sudden sense of humiliation, all the more as Julia had suspended the hairbrush, and was looking down on her derisively—or so she fancied.

“Why, mamma, I must have misunderstood you. I thought it was the same as if I was Julia, you know.”

“Julia is eighteen years old, my child. You are twelve. But what had Ethel done that was wrong?”

Then Mary told of the quarrel with Kittyleen, and the notes which had passed between the two little girls. Though naturally given to exaggeration, she had been so carefully trained in this regard that her word could usually be taken now without “a grain of salt.”

Mrs. Gray looked relieved and amused.

“So that was the way you punished your little sister? I was half afraid you had been shutting her up in the closet, or possibly snipping her fingers, either of which things, my child, I should not allow.”

“No, ma’am.” Mary felt like a queen dethroned.

“You were ‘clothed with a little brief authority’ yesterday, to be sure, but you should have waited till to-day and reported any misbehavior to me, or—if I was too ill to hear it—to Julia.”

“Yes, mamma,” said Mary meekly.

“Not that I blame you for this mistake, dear. You have shown judgment and self-control, and no harm has been done as yet, I hope. Only remember, if you are left to take care of the children again, you are not the one to punish them, whatever they may do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” repeated Mary; but her face had brightened at the words “judgment and self-control.”

“I am afraid Ethel’s repentance doesn’t amount to much,” said Julia.

“I thought of that myself. I’m afraid it doesn’t,” admitted Mary.

She watched the brush as it passed slowly and evenly through her mother’s hair. Her color came and went as if she were on the point of saying something which after all she found it hard to say.

“Mamma, Miss Pike is going to have—spelling-school to-night.”

Mrs. Gray’s eyes were closed; she did not appear to be listening.

“It’s in her schoolhouse at Rosewood, and anybody can go that chooses.”

“Ah?”

“Papa isn’t at home this morning.” A pause. “And Fred Allen and I—Now, mamma, I’m afraid you’ll think it isn’t quite best; but there’s a moon every night now; and did you ever go to an old-fashioned spelling-school, where they choose sides?”

“Flaxie, don’t make that noise with the comb,” said Julia. “I suppose you and Fred would like the horse and sleigh, and Fred hasn’t the courage to ask father; is that it?”

“Oh, may we go, mamma? Please may we go?”

“What, to Rosewood in the evening—two miles?”

“Oh, I wish I hadn’t asked you. I wish I hadn’t asked you; I mean I wish you wouldn’t answer now, not till I tell you something more.”

“Well, I will not answer at all; I leave it to your father.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that; I don’t want you to leave it to papa.”

“Flaxie,” remonstrated Julia, “can’t you see that you are tiring mother?”

“I won’t tire her, Ninny. I only want her to think a minute about Whiz, how old he is and lame. He doesn’t frisk as he used to, does he, mamma? And I’m sure Miss Pike will want me at her spelling-school, we’re such friends. And Fanny Townsend is going, and lots and lots of girls of my age.”

“My dear, I leave it entirely to your father,” said Mrs. Gray wearily.

“Yes, mamma; but if you’ll talk to him first, and say Fred’s afraid to ask him, and—and Whiz is so old——”

Julia frowned and pointed to the door. Mary ought to have needed no second warning. She might have seen for herself the conversation was too fatiguing.

“What does make me so selfish and heedless and forgetful and everything that’s bad,” thought she, rushing down-stairs. “I love my mother as well as Ninny does, and am generally careful not to tire her; but if I once forget they think I always forget, and next thing papa will forbid my going into her room.”

Fred stood by the bay window awaiting his cousin’s report.

“O Fred, I don’t know yet; mamma isn’t well enough to be talked to, and we’ll have to wait till papa comes home. Perhaps papa won’t think you are too young to drive Whiz just out to Rosewood. It isn’t like going to Parnassus, ten miles; you know he didn’t allow that.”

“Pretty well too if a fellow fourteen years old can’t be trusted with that old rack-o-bones,” said the youth scornfully, remembering that Preston at his age had driven Whiz; but then Preston and Fred were different boys.

“Well, I’ll be the one to ask him,” said Mary. “Shouldn’t you think the moon would make a great difference? I should.”

It was while Dr. Gray was carving the roast beef at dinner that Mary came out desperately with the spelling-school question. He seemed to be thinking of something else at first, but when brought to understand what she meant, he said Miss Pike was a sensible woman, and he approved of her, and Mary and Fred “might go and spell the whole school down if they could.”

This was beyond all expectation. Fred looked gratified, and Mary, slipping from her chair, sprang to her father and gave him a sudden embrace, which interfered with his carving and almost drove the knife through the platter.

All the afternoon her mind was much agitated. What dress should she wear? Did Ninny think mother would object to the best bonnet? And oh, she ought to be spelling every moment! Wouldn’t grandma please ask her all the hard words she could possibly think of?

Grandma gave out a black list,—eleemosynary, phthisic, poniard, and the like,—and though Mary sometimes tripped, she did admirably well. Logomachy, anagrams, and other spelling games were popular in the Gray family, and all the children were good spellers. Dr. Gray said, “They tell us that silent letters are to be dropped out of our language, and then the words will all look as they sound; but this has not been done yet, and meanwhile it is well to know how to spell words as they are printed now.”