Still more does the sister of a couple of seasons wonder at the ardour and fidelity of buttercup friendships. In after-life men have friends and women have lovers. The home and the husband and the child absorb the whole tenderness of a woman where they only temper and moderate the old external affections of her spouse. But then girl-friendship is a much more vivid and far more universal thing than friendship among boys. The one means, in nine cases out of ten, an accident of neighbourhood in school that fades with the next remove, or a partnership in some venture, or a common attachment to some particular game. But the school friendship of a girl is a passionate idolatry and devotion of friend for friend. Their desks are full of little gifts to each other. They have pet names that no strange ear may know, and hidden photographs that no strange eye may see. They share all the innocent secrets of their hearts, they are fondly interested in one another's brothers, they plan subtle devices to wear the same ribbons and to dress their hair in the same fashion. No amount of affection ever made a boy like the business of writing his friend a letter in the holidays, but half the charm of holidays to a girl lies in the letters she gets and the letters she sends. Nothing save friendship itself is more sacred to girlhood than a friend's letter; nothing more exquisite than the pleasure of stealing from the breakfast-table to kiss it and read it, and then tie it up with the rest that lie in the nook that nobody knows but the one pet brother. The pet brother is as necessary an element in buttercup life as the friend. He is generally the dullest, the most awkward, the most silent of the family group. He takes all this sisterly devotion as a matter of course, and half resents it as a matter of boredom. He is fond of informing his adorer that he hates girls, that they are always kissing and crying, and that they can't play cricket. The buttercup rushes away to pour out her woes to her little nest in the woods, and hurries back to worship as before. Girlhood indeed is the one stage of feminine existence in which woman has brothers. Her first season out digs a gulf between their sister and "the boys" of the family that nothing can fill up. Henceforth the latter are useful to get tickets for her, to carry her shawls, to drive her to Goodwood or to Lord's. In the mere fetching and carrying business they sink into the general ruck of cousins, grumbling only a little more than cousins usually do at the luck that dooms them to hew wood and draw water for the belle of the season. But in the pure equality of earlier days the buttercup shares half the games and all the secrets of the boys about her, and brotherhood and sisterhood are very real things indeed.