'I used to think I should like to be a nun once,' prattled Polly, 'and wear a great white flapping cap, as they did in Belgium. Soeur Marie used to be so kind. I shall never forget that long, straight lime-walk, where the girls used to take their recreation, or sit under the cherry-trees with their lace-work, while Soeur Marie read the lives of the saints. Do you like reading the lives of the saints, Aunt Milly? I don't. They are glorious, of course; but it pains me to know how uncomfortable they made themselves.' 'I do not think I have ever read any, Polly.' 'Have you not?'--with a surprised arching of the brows. 'Soeur Marie thought them the finest books in the world. She used to tell me stories of many of them; and her face would flush and her eyes grow so bright, I used to think she was a saint herself.' Mildred rarely interrupted the girl's narratives; but little bits haunted her now and then, and lingered in her memory with tender persistence. What sober prose her life seemed in contrast to that of this fourteen-years' old girl! How bare and empty seemed her niche compared to Polly's series of pictures! How clearly Mildred could see it all! The wandering artist-life, in search of the beautiful, poverty oppressing the mind less sadly when refreshed by novel scenes of interest; the grave, taciturn Philip Ellison, banishing himself and his pride in a self-chosen exile, and training his motherless child to the same exclusiveness. The few humble friends, grouped under the same roof, and sharing the same obscurity; stretching out the right hand of fellowship, which was grasped, not cordially, but with a certain protest, the little room which Polly described so graphically being a less favourite resort than the one where Dad Fabian was painting his Tobit. 'It was only after papa got so ill that Mrs. Rogers would bring up her work and sit with us. Papa did not like it much; but he was so heavy that I could not lift him alone, and, noisy as she was, she knew how to cheer him up. Dad suited papa best: they used to talk so beautifully together. You have no idea how Dad can talk, and how clever he is. Papa used to say he was one of nature's gentlemen. His father was only a working man, you know;' and Polly drew herself up with a gesture Mildred had noticed before, and which was to draw upon her later the _soubriquet_ of 'the princess.' 'I think none the less of him for that,' returned Mildred, with gentle reproof. 'You are not like papa then,' observed Polly, with one of her pretty gestures of dissent. 'It fretted him so being with people not nice in their ways. The others would call him milord, and laugh at his grand manners; but all the same they were afraid of him; every one feared him but I; and I only loved him,' finished Polly, with one of her girlish outbursts of emotion, which could only be soothed by extra petting on Mildred's part.