“Oh, a nice pair of tutors you are!” cried Master Charlie. “I’m bigger than the two of you put together--and I’m a man. You may be as envious as you like, but you cannot alter that.” Now, though the girls laughed, and with great contempt scouted the idea of being envious, it is not to be denied that some small morsel of envy concerning masculine privileges lay in the elder sister’s heart. It was said at home that Agnes was clever--this was her distinction in the family; and Agnes, having a far-away perception of the fact, greatly longed for some share of those wonderful imaginary advantages which “opened all the world,” as she herself said, to a man’s ambition; she coloured a little with involuntary excitement, while Marian’s sweet and merry laughter still rang in her ear. Marian could afford to laugh--for this beautiful child was neither clever nor ambitious, and had, in all circumstances, the sweetest faculty of content. “Well, Charlie, a man can do anything,” said Agnes; “_we_ are obliged to put up with trifles. If I were a man, I should be content with nothing less than the greatest--I know that!” “Stuff!” answered the big boy once more; “you may romance about it as you like, but I know better. Who is to care whether you are content or not? You must be only what you can, if you were the greatest hero in the world.” “I do not know, for my part, what you are talking of,” said Marian. “Is this all about what you are going to do, Charlie, and because you cannot make up your mind whether you will be a clerk in papa’s office, or go to old Mr Foggo’s to learn to be a lawyer? I don’t see what heroes have to do with it either one way or other. You ought to go to your business quietly, and be content. Why should _you_ be better than papa?” The question was unanswerable. Charlie hitched his great shoulders, and made marvellous faces, but replied nothing. Agnes went on steadily in a temporary abstraction; Marian ran on in advance. The street was only half-built--one of those quietest of surburban streets which are to be found only in the outskirts of great towns. The solitary little houses, some quite apart, some in pairs--detached and semi-detached, according to the proper description--stood in genteel retirement within low walls and miniature shrubberies. There was nothing ever to be seen in this stillest of inhabited places--therefore it was called Bellevue: and the inhabitants veiled their parlour windows behind walls and boarded railings, lest their privacy should be invaded by the vulgar vision of butcher, or baker, or green-grocer’s boy. Other eyes than those of the aforesaid professional people never disturbed the composure of Laurel Cottage and Myrtle Cottage, Elmtree Lodge and Halcyon House--wherefore the last new house had a higher wall and a closer railing than any of its predecessors; and it was edifying to observe everybody’s virtuous resolution to see nothing where there was visibly nothing to see.