Miss Cecilia Davenant Carter had been at home a good many weeks before she came to see me. Of course Hugh John was now at college, and doubtless that made a difference. But she had never stayed away so long before, and whatever reason Cissy might have to be angry with Master Hugh John, she had not the least right to take it out on ME!

However, she came at last—chiefly, I think, to show me the gold watch on her wrist. This she wanted so badly to do that it must have hurt her dreadfully to stay away as long as she did. So she sat fingering it, but not running to ask me to admire it, as a girl naturally does. Of course I took no notice, though it made me feel mean. We talked about the woods and the autumn tints (schoolgirls always like these two words—they remind them that it is the season for blackberries and jam), till at last I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. So I went over to Cissy, and said, "I think that's the prettiest bracelet I ever saw in all my life!"

And she said, "Do you?" looking up at me funnily. "Do you really?" she repeated the words, looking straight at me.

"Yes, I do indeed!" I answered. And—what do you think?—the next moment she was crying on my shoulder! Of course I understood. Every girl will, without needing to be told. And as for men (and "Old Cats"), it is no use attempting to explain to them. They never could know just how we two felt.

But Cissy had really nothing in the least "catty" about her. "Quite the reverse, I assure you!" as the East Country folk say. She even took it off and let me try it on without ever warning me to be careful with it. And that, you know, is a good deal for a girl who is "not friends" with your own brother, and has only had a new "real-gold" watch-bracelet for three or four weeks.

But then, Cissy could never be calm and restful like Elizabeth Fortinbras. Cissy did everything in a rush, and so, I suppose, got somehow closer to the heart of our impassive Hugh John just on that account. Elizabeth Fortinbras was too like my brother to touch him "where he lived," as Sir Toady would say.

Well, after a while Cissy stopped crying, and took my handkerchief without a word and quite as a matter of course (which showed as clearly as anything how things stood between us).

Then she said, "Priss, do you know, I did an awfully mean thing, and I want you to help me to make it all right again!"

In a book, of course (a proper book, I mean), I ought to have asked Ciss all sorts of questions, and said that in everything which did not affect the honor of the house of Picton Smith I was at her service. And so on.

But of course ordinary girls don't talk like that now-a-days. If you have what our sweet Maid calls a "snarl" against anybody—why, mostly every one plays hockey now, and it is the simplest thing in the world to "take a drive at her shins, and say how sorry you are afterwards"! So at least (the Maid informs me) some girls, who shall be nameless, have been known to do at her school.

I waited for Cissy to tell me of the dreadfully mean thing she had done. But of course I assured her first that, whatever it was—yes, whatever—I should do just what she wanted done to help her. For I knew she would do the same for me.

Then she told me that in her first anger about the telegram—for she had been far more angry about that than about the sending back the other half of the crooked sixpence—a thing which really mattered a thousand times more (but of course that was exactly like a girl!)—she had put the telegram, and both parts of the crooked sixpence, and all of Hugh John's letters she could find—chiefly the short and simple annals of a Rugby "forward"—in a lozenge-box—and (here Cissy dropped her voice) sent them all, registered, to Elizabeth Fortinbras!