"I am going to sing there,--that is different. It is very hard to me not to come, but I must not, because I have laid it upon myself to do nothing but study until I come out. Because, you see, if I make friends now, I might lose them then, for they might not like to know me." "Miss Benette!"--I stamped my foot--"how dare you say so? We should always be proud to know you." "I cannot tell that," she retorted; "it might be, or it might not. Perhaps you will think I am right one day. I should like to have come," she persisted bewitchingly. But I was inwardly hurt, and I daresay she thought me outwardly sulky, for it was all I could do to wish her good-evening like a "young gentleman," as she had called me. I said to Millicent, when we were walking the next morning, that I had had my fortune told. We had a long conversation. I saw she was very anxious to disabuse me of the belief that I must necessarily be what, in myself, I had always held myself ready to become, and I laughed her quite to scorn. "But, Charles," she remonstrated, "if this is to be, you must be educated with a direct view to those purposes." "So I shall be; but when she said medicine she did not mean I should be an apothecary, Millicent," and I laughed the more. "No, I rather think it is music you ought to profess. But in that case you will require high as well as profound instruction." "I mean to profess an instrument, and I mean to go to Germany and learn all about it." "My dear boy!" "Yes, I do, and I know I shall; but as I have not chosen my instrument yet, I shall wait." Millicent herself laughed heartily at this. "Would you like to learn the horn, Charles? or the flute? or perhaps that new instrument, the ophicleide?" And so the subject dwindled into a joke for that while. I then told her in strict confidence about Laura. I scarcely ever saw her so much excited to interest; she evidently almost thought Clara herself angelic, and to my delight she at length promised to call with me upon her, if I would ascertain that it would be convenient. I shall never forget, too, that Millicent begged for me from my mother some baked apples, some delicate spiced jelly, and some of her privately concocted lozenges, for Laura. I do think my mother would have liked to dispense these last _à la largesse_ among the populace. I carried these treasures in a small basket to Miss Benette, and saw her just long enough to receive her assurance that she should be so pleased if my sister would come and look at her work.