Cosie! why the name was an inspiration; it fitted her to a nicety. Charlotte was simply a badinage, something for which her godmother was to blame, not she; no one but her brother would ever call her by such a term; it was almost crushing--but Miss Cosie! Queenie called her by it at once, after the little woman had tripped up to her and lightly kissed her on the cheek, and then patted her with her white dimpled hand. "There, there, my dear, I knew we should be friends; take off your bonnet and stay, and you shall taste my ginger wine." This was always Miss Cosie's first speech to strangers. It was true no one ever wore bonnets in Hepshaw; but it was one of her ways to lament their disuse among the younger generation, as a falling-off of the good old times. "Such fly-away, foolish things, my dear; now," as she would say, "a bonnet is so much more comfortable and becoming, and a pretty face looks so well in it. Shady! nonsense, my love, you can always wear an ugly if you are afraid of your complexion; but bonnets were bonnets in those days, one did not carry a nosegay tied up in straw then." Miss Cosie's one idea in life, next to petting people, was her brother. No one, in her opinion, could come up to him; he was simply perfect. "Such a mind, such a genius, and yet as simple as a child," she would exclaim. Her love and pride in him fairly bubbled over at times. Christopher, or Kit, as she sometimes called him, was the object of her sisterly idolatry. It was odd and yet touching to see her protecting tenderness; perhaps her ten years' seniority had given the motherly element to her affections. "You see, Kit is still a boy to me," she would say sometimes; "when he was a little fellow I used to put him to bed and sing him to sleep. I never can forget that somehow; and, dear me, my dear, he is still so helpless,--these clever men are, you know,--he never can remember even to put on a warm flannel or take a clean handkerchief out of his drawer; I just have to go in and put everything ready to his hand." "Why, when the bishop came once," continued Miss Cosie, lifting her hands and eyes, "he was actually going to the station in that brown dressing-gown of his, if I had not run down the lane after him. Think what his lordship would have said at seeing one of his clergy dressed out in that ragged-robin fashion!" "I have found out what flower Miss Cosie most resembles," said Queenie, when, after an hour's chat, they had left the vicarage. "Guess, Cathy." "Little eyebright, I should say, or the ox-eyed daisy." "No; the pansy of course. Cathy, how can you be so dense! why she looks and talks and breathes of nothing but heart's-ease." CHAPTER XIII. A VISIT TO ELDERBERRY LODGE.