‘There you are quite wrong,’ said Florence, with great decision--‘he is not silly: I wish he were, then one might think he didn’t know any better; but even papa allows he is very clever. It is not from want of brains or sense either, if he would only be as good as he knows how---- ’ ‘Oh, if that is your opinion! Mother thinks he is only weak, and does what people ask him.’ ‘Aunt Emily is just as far out of it as you are. Does he ever do anything that _we_ ask him? There is papa at him for ever--is he any the better for it? Weak! that is what people say, thinking it’s a kind of an excuse. I call it strong--to resist everything you ought to attend to, and take up everything you ought not. How can that be weak?’ ‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Mab; ‘I don’t understand about boys. Jim is the only one I ever knew intimately. But mother thinks if some one were to get hold of him in the right sort of way----’ ‘What is the right sort of way? I suppose Aunt Emily thinks papa doesn’t know--nor any of us who have it to do; that is just the way with people. You are always thinking of a thing, thinking, and puzzling, and troubling: and then somebody comes in who has never spent ten minutes on it altogether, and says you are not taking the right way! Perhaps we are not; but who are they to pretend to know better? and since they are so wise, why don’t they tell us which is the right way?’ ‘I am sure,’ cried Mab, ‘I never meant to make you angry, and mother is not one to interfere. She only said it to me. But since you’re so full of this, Florry, I think I had better go, and not trouble you any more, for I only wanted some fun, and you are thinking of nothing but trouble. I’ll run down to the water, and jump into a boat and have a little spin by myself.’ ‘Oh, Mab, don’t,’ cried Florence, clutching her once more. ‘Here we are at our gate, just come in and ask him. He will come far more readily for you than for me.’ But it was with an ill grace that Mab followed her cousin through the Rectory kitchen garden, between the borders which veiled the lines of potatoes and cabbages. It might be flattering to suppose her capable of it, but she had not any desire to fill the place of missionary and guiding influence to her cousin Jim. VI