'Minna Wroe,' Miss Woollacott observed in her tart voice, as the little pupil-teacher came down to breakfast on the Sunday morning after the picnic, 'you're nearly seven minutes late--six minutes and forty-nine seconds, to be precisely accurate: and I've been all that time sitting here with my hands before me waiting prayers for you. And, Minna Wroe, I've noticed that since that young man you describe as your cousin went to Rome, you've had a letter with a foreign stamp upon it every Sunday. And when those letters arrive I observe that you're almost invariably late for breakfast. Now, Minna Wroe, I should advise you to write to your _cousin_'--with a strong emphasis of sarcastic doubt upon the last word--'asking him to make his communications a little less frequent: or else not to lie in bed quite so late in the morning reading your _cousin's_ weekly effusions. Family affection's an excellent thing in its way, no doubt, but it may go a little too far in the table of affinities.' Instead of answering, to Miss Woollacott's great surprise, poor little Minna burst suddenly into an uncontrollable flood of tears. Now Miss Woollacott wasn't really cruel or ill-natured, but merely desiccated and fossilised, after the fashion of her kind, by the long drying-up process incidental to her unfortunate condition and unhappy calling: and moreover, she shared the common and pardonable inability of all women (I say 'all' this time advisedly) to see another woman crying without immediately kneeling down beside her, and taking her hands in hers, and trying with all her heart to comfort and console her. [Illustration: 0244]