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cultural papers. But will that satisfy you? You know it won’t. And then the petty jealousy of these small prunes-and-prisms places—if you do anything the people you went to school with can’t do, some of them will never forgive you. And they'll all think you’re the heroine of your own stories—especially if you portray her beautiful and charming. If you write a love story they'll be sure it’s your own. You'll get so tired of Blair Water—you'll know all the people in it—what they are and can be—it’ll be like reading a book for the twentieth time. Oh, I know all about it. ‘I was alive before you were borned,’ as I said when I was eight, to a playmate of six. You'll get discouraged—the hour of three o’clock will gradually overwhelm you—there’s a three o’clock every night, remember—you’ll give up—you'l marry that cousin of yours———”

“Never.”

“Well, some one like him, then, and ‘settle down’———”

“No, I'll never ‘settle down,’” said Emily decidedly. “Never as long as I live—what a stodgy condition!”

—“and you’ll have a parlour like this of Aunt Angela’s,” continued Miss Royal relentlessly. “A mantel-piece crowded with photographs—an easel with an ‘enlarged’ picture in a frame eight inches wide—a red plush album with a crocheted doily on it, a crazy-quilt on your spare-room bed—a hand-painted banner in your hall—and, as a final touch of elegance, an asparagus fern will ‘grace the centre of your dining-room table.’”

“No,” said Emily gravely, “such things are not among the Murray traditions.”

“Well, the spiritual equivalent of them, then. Oh, I can see your whole life, Emily, here in a place like this where people can’t see a mile beyond their nose.”

“I can see farther than that,” said Emily, putting up her chin. “I can see to the stars.”

“I was speaking figuratively, my dear.”

“So was I. Oh, Miss Royal, I know life is rather cramped here in some ways—but the sky is as much mine