Unluckily the holidays pass away, and the buttercup passes away like the holidays. There is a strange humour about the subtle gradations by which girlhood passes out of all this free, genial, irreflective life into the self-consciousness, the reserve, the artificiality of womanhood. It is the sudden discovery of a new sense of enjoyment that first whirls the buttercup out of her purely family affections. She laughs at the worship of her new adorer. She is as far as Dian herself from any return of it; but the sense of power is awakened, and she has a sort of Puckish pride in bringing her suitor to her feet. Nobody is so exacting, so capricious, so uncertain, so fascinating as a buttercup, because no one is so perfectly free from love. The first touch of passion renders her more exacting and more charming than ever. She resents the suspicion of a tenderness whose very novelty scares her, and she visits her resentment on her worshipper. If he enjoys a kind farewell overnight, he atones for it by the coldest greeting in the morning. There are days when the buttercup runs amuck among her adorers, days of snubbing and sarcasm and bitterness. The poor little bird beats savagely against the wires that are closing her round. And then there are days of pure abandon and coquetry and fun. The buttercup flirts, but she flirts in such an open and ingenuous fashion that nobody is a bit the worse for it. She tells you the fun she had overnight with that charming young fellow from Oxford, and you know that to-morrow she will be telling that hated Guardsman what fun she has had with you. She is a little dazzled with the wealth and profusion of the new life that is bursting on her, and she wings her way from one charming flower to another with little thought of more than a sip from each. Then there is a return of pure girlhood, days in which the buttercup is simply the buttercup again. Flirtations are forgotten, conquests are abandoned, brothers are worshipped with the old worship; and we start back, and rub our eyes, and wonder whether life is all a delusion, and whether this pure creature of home and bread-and-butter is the volatile, provoking little puss who gave our hand such a significant squeeze yesterday.