"I was asking Addie if she didn't want Horace to be the heir. I know you do, mamma--oh, just for his own sake, because you think he's the nicest, don't you? I heard you tell him one day "--here Lottie looked up with a candid gaze and audaciously imitated Mrs. Blake's manner--"that though we knew his cousin _first_, he--Horace, you know--seemed to drop _so_ naturally into _all_ our ways that it was quite _delightful_ to feel that we needn't stand on _any_ ceremony with him." "Good gracious, Lottie! what do you mean by listening to every word I say?" "I didn't listen--I heard," said Lottie. "I always do hear when you say your words as if they had little dashes under them." "Well, Horace Thorne _is_ easier to get on with than his cousin," said Mrs. Blake, taking no notice of Lottie's mimicry. "There, I said so: mamma would like it to be Horace. Nobody asks what I should like--nobody thinks about me and Percival." "Oh, indeed! I wasn't aware," said Mrs. Blake. "When is that to come off? I dare say you will look very well in orange-blossoms and a pinafore!" "Oh, you think I'm too young, do you? But a little while ago you were always saying that I was grown up, and oughtn't to want any more childish games. What was I to do?" "Upon my word!" exclaimed Mrs. Blake. "I'll buy you a doll for a birthday present, to keep you out of mischief." "Too late," said Lottie from the rug. She burst into sudden laughter, loud but not unmelodious. "What rubbish we are talking! Seventeen to-morrow, and Addie is nearly twenty; and sometimes I think I must be a hundred!" "Well, you are talking nonsense now," Mrs. Blake exclaimed. "Why, you baby! only last November you would go into that wet meadow by the rectory to play trap-and-ball with Robin and Jack. And such a fuss as there was if one wanted to make you the least tidy and respectable!" "Was that last November?" Lottie stared thoughtfully into space. "Queer that last November should be so many years ago, isn't it? Poor little Cock Robin! I met him in the lane the day before he went away. They will keep him in jackets, and he hates them so! I laughed at him, and told him to be a good little boy and mind his book. He didn't seem to like it, somehow." "I dare say he didn't," said Addie, who had been silently recovering herself: "there's no mistake about it when you laugh at any one." "There shall be no mistake about anything I do," Lottie asserted. "I'm going to bed now." She sprang to her feet and stood looking at her sister: "What jolly hair you've got, Addie!" "Yours is just as thick, or thicker," said Addie. "Each individual hair is a good deal thicker, if you mean that. 'Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horse-hairs!' That's what Percy quoted to me one day when I was grumbling, and I said I wasn't sure he wasn't rude. Addie, are Horace and Percival fond of each other?" "How can I tell? I suppose so."