“So must you be,” said Armine; “I never got on with anybody so well. He knows just how it is! He says if God gives one such a life, He will help one to find out the way to make the best of it for oneself and other people, and to bear to see other people doing what one can’t, and we are to help one another. Oh, Babie! you must like Fordham!” “I must if you do!” said Babie. “But he is awfully old for a friend for you, Armie.” “He is nineteen,” said Armine, “but people get more and more of the same age as they grow older. And he likes all our books, and more too, Babie. He had such a delicious book of French letters, that he lent me, with things in them that were just what I wanted. If we are to be abroad all the winter, he will get his mother to go wherever we do. Suppose we went to the Holy Land, Babie!” “Oh! then we could find Jotapata! Oh, no,” she added, humbly, “I promised Miss Ogilvie not to talk of Jotapata on a Sunday.” “And going to the Holy Land only to look for it would be much the same thing,” said Armine. “Besides, I expect it is up among the Druses, where one can’t go.” “Armie,” in the tone of a great confession, “I’ve told Sydney all about it. Have you told Lord Fordham?” “No,” said Armine, who was less exclusively devoted to the great romance. “I wonder whether he would read it?” “I’ve brought it. Nineteen copybooks and a dozen blank ones, though it was so hard to make Delrio pack them up.” “Hurrah for the new ones! We did so want some for the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ the paper at Leukerbad was so bad. You should hear the verses the Doctor wrote on the mud baths. They are as stunning as ‘Fly Leaves.’ Mr. Editor, I say,” as Lord Fordham’s tall figure strode towards them, “she has brought out a dozen clean copybooks. Isn’t that a joy for the ‘Joy’?” “Had you no other intentions for them?” said Fordham, detecting something of disappointment in Babie’s face. “You surely were not going to write exercises in them?” “Oh, no!” said Babie, “only--” “She can’t mention it on Sunday,” said Armine, a little wickedly. “It’s a wonderful long story about the Crusaders.” “And,” explained Babie, “our governess said we--that is I--thought of nothing else, and made the Lessons at Church and everything else apply to it, so she made me resolve to say nothing about it on Sunday.” “And she has brought out nineteen copybooks full of it,” added Armine. “Yes,” said Babie, “but the little speckled ones are very small, and have half the leaves torn out, and we used to write larger when we began. I think,” she added, with the humility of an aspirant contributor towards the editor of a popular magazine, “if Lord Fordham would be so kind as to look at it, Armie thought it might do what people call, I believe, supplying the serial element of fiction, and I should be happy to copy it out for each number, if I write well enough.”