"No. When they begin to have that sort of look, I carry them off for a row up the race and a pic-nic, or some such nonsense." "Then I wish I was one of your girls, for I am tired all the time," said poor Isa. "I am so tired now I should like to go straight to bed." "Go to bed, then," said Aunt Harriet. "Lie down here on my bed and sleep till dinner-time." "I can't," said Isa. "I must dress for dinner, and then look over my Latin. I wish there had never been any ancient Romans, or else that I had been born one." "Then you might have been obliged to learn Greek, and that would have been worse." "Pa says I have got to begin Greek next year," said Isa. "Oh dear! If I could only see any end to it, I shouldn't mind so much. But I must go and dress, or I shall not dare to show myself at the dinner-table." "Oh dear!" she said to herself as she went to her own room. "I do wish pa would go away, and then ma and I could have Aunt Harriet all to ourselves. Pa will be wanting to talk education all the time. I never was so sick of anything. If I ever have any children, they shall never be educated at all." Miss Hardy was no very great favourite with her brother-in-law; and, as old-fashioned people say, "there was no love lost between them." Miss Hardy was by no means one of those vine-like, submissive women who were Mr. Ferrand's standards of excellence. She had been at the head of an establishment of her own ever since she was three-and-twenty—an establishment in which her will was law. She had had great experience of all sorts of people. She had formed her own opinions and was prepared to defend them, and she did not defer to Mr. Ferrand's superior claims in point of intellect, family, and social position so much as that gentleman thought his wife's sister should have done. On the other hand, Miss Hardy thought her brother-in-law conceited and disposed to be tyrannical both to his wife and daughter, and perhaps she hardly did justice to his good qualities. However, she was incapable of treating him with disrespect in the presence of her sister, and Mr. Ferrand, on his part, could not be rude to a lady in his own house. Nevertheless, Mrs. Ferrand always felt a secret uneasiness when the two were together, and it was with a feeling of relief that she heard her husband apologize to her sister for the necessity which existed of his leaving town to-morrow to attend to some property he was about to sell at Hobarttown. "So you mean to sell that mill?" said his wife. "Yes, I think so. I have a good opportunity, and I prefer to invest the money where it will take care of itself. You had better take the carriage and give your sister a view of the different places in the city. Probably she will like to visit 'The House of Refuge' and 'The School for Truant Children.'" "I want to see your old ladies' 'Home,'" said Miss Hardy. "They are thinking of getting up a similar institution in Cohansey, and I have heard this one highly spoken of."