Miss Etta Mountjoy was a young lady of the period. She was the youngest of Mr. Mountjoy's children, and the baby and pet of all. Her mother died when she was about five years old, and since then she had always done exactly as she pleased; her father would not control her, and her eldest sister, who took charge of the family in her mother's place, could not. It was well that the girl had no evil tendencies and was, upon the whole, well-principled, warm-hearted, and good-natured, or she might have gone very grievously astray. As it was, she was now at seventeen a bright butterfly, flitting from one to another of the flowers of life, and sipping as much honey as she could from each. She was fond of all sorts of bright, pretty things, handsome clothes and jewelry included. She liked to sing and she liked to dance, to go to parties when there were any, and to attend concerts and theatres when she went to town; in a word, she was fond of "having a good time," as Americans express it, whenever and wherever she could get a chance. Nor did Miss Etta mind work. She was a girl of energy, who would willingly walk miles to attend a picnic or climb a mountain, and she did not hesitate to work for hours on a trimming for her dress, or even some more useful piece of sewing. She was always having _furores_ for something; at one time it was gardening, when she coaxed her father to have a good-sized piece of ground dug up and laid out for her, and actually raised, not flowers, as one would expect, but quite respectable vegetables, hoeing the beans, corn, and cabbages herself, and weeding out the cucumbers, lettuce, and radishes with persistent fidelity. At another time she had a poultry-mania, and a chicken-house with the most approved nests, warming-apparatus, etc., was constructed for the little lady, and here she daily set the hens, fed the chickens, and collected the eggs, selling them to her father at exorbitant prices. Again, cooking absorbed her time and gave occupation to her energies; and the family were treated to strange compounds of her concocting, while the old servant who reigned supreme in the kitchen was in the depths of despair at the number of dishes and pans she was called upon to clear up, the waste and breakage that went on, and the general disorganization of her lifelong arrangements.