‘Do you remember, Rose,’ said Anne, with a little solemnity, ‘how we used to wish for a brother? We thought we could tell him everything, and ask him questions as we never could do to papa, and yet it would be quite different from telling each other. He would know better; he would be able to tell us quantities of things, and yet he would understand what we meant too.’ ‘I remember you used to wish for it,’ said Rose, honestly, ‘and that it would have been such a very good thing for the entail.’ ‘Then,’ said Anne, with fervour, ‘it is a little like that--like what we thought that would be. One feels that one’s heart is running over with things to say. One wants to tell him everything, what happened when one was a little girl, and all the nonsense that has ever been in one’s mind. I told him even about that time I was shut up in the blue room, and how frightened I was. Everything! it does not matter if it is a trifle. One knows he will not think it a trifle. Exactly--at least almost exactly, like what it would be to have a brother--but yet with a difference too,’ Anne added, after a pause, blushing, she could scarcely tell why. ‘Ah!’ said Rose, with great perspicacity, ‘but the difference is just what I want to know.’ The oracle, however, made no response, and in despair the pertinacious questioner changed the subject a little. ‘If you will not tell me what he said, nor what sort of a thing it is, you may at least let me know one thing--what are you going to do?’ ‘Nothing,’ said Anne, softly. She stood with her hands clasped before her, looking with some wistfulness into the blueness of the distant air, as if into the future, shaking her head a little, acknowledging to herself that she could not see into it. ‘Nothing--so far as I know.’ ‘Nothing! are you going to be in love, and engaged, and all that, and yet do _nothing_? I know papa will not consent--mamma told me. She said you would have to give up everything if you married him; and that it would be a good thing for----’ Here Rose paused, gave her head a little shake to banish the foolish words with which she had almost betrayed the confidence of her mother’s communication, and reddened with alarm to think how near she had been to letting it all out. ‘I am not going to----marry,’ said Anne, in spite of herself, a little coldly, though she scarcely knew why, ‘if that is what you want to know.’ ‘Then what,’ said Rose, majestically, ‘do you mean to do?’ The elder sister laughed a little. It was at the serious pertinacity of her questioner, who would not take an answer. ‘I never knew you so curious before,’ she said. ‘One does not need to do anything all at once----’