Why should not one of mine go with them? There really seemed no reason. I had twelve stamps. There were pens, ink, and paper. My non-success would merely add to the list of failures with which the family was already credited--making seventy-three. What was that? The question was, what sentence should I send. You were left to choose your own. But the presumption was that your chances of success would not be lessened if the one selected was a good one. I had it on the instant. My desk chanced to be open. There, staring at me on the top, was the very thing. At Mrs Sawyer's school there had once been a governess named Winston--Sophia Winston. We all of us liked her. I adored her. She was one of the best and sweetest creatures that ever lived. But her health was not very good and she had to leave. Before she left I asked her to write a motto in my book of mottoes. Although she said she would, when I came to look for the book I could not find it anywhere. Somehow, in those days, my things always were playing games of hide-and-seek with me. So, instead, she wrote a motto on a sheet of paper. There lay the identical sheet of paper in front of me at that moment. I took it up; opened it; read it:-- "Who goes slowly goes safely and goes far." The very thing! I more than fancied that it was with _malice prepense_ that Miss Winston had referred me to that rendering of what I knew was an Italian proverb. It was not my custom to go slowly, or safely, or--in the sense in which the word was there used--far. But, for the purpose of the present competition, that was not a matter of the slightest consequence. I made six copies of Miss Winston's sentence; picked out the one which I judged was the best; and, after destroying the other five, packed it up with the requisite twelve stamps, and sent it off to the office of the paper. Of course I told no one of what I had done. I was not quite so silly as that. The boys would have laughed--especially Dick, who was once rude enough to ask me if I wrote with the end of a broom-stick. While Nora--after her revelations of the hollowness and deceitfulness of such things--would have concluded I was mad. I simply held my tongue. And I waited. The paper to which I had sent was a weekly one--it came out every Wednesday. It appeared that the competition was a weekly one also. The sentences had to reach the office on the one Wednesday morning, and in the paper which came out on the following Wednesday the results were announced. Either not many sentences were sent in, or there must have been someone in the office who was uncommonly quick at reading character. There used to be a girl at Lingfield House who pretended to read character from handwriting. She wanted pages of it before she would attempt to say what kind of character you had. Then she would take days to form an opinion. And then it would be all wrong. I daresay that in the office of the paper they had had a deal of practice.