“Very well, my dear,” said Mamma, roused to assert her dignity, “but we do not wish any one to be generous to Agnes--of course not!--that would be out of the question; and nobody, you know, could look at that book without feeling sure of everybody else liking it. Why, William, it is so natural! You may speak of Thackeray and Dickens as you like; I know they are very clever--but I am sure I never read anything of theirs like that scene--that last scene with Helen and her mother. I feel as if I had been present there my own self.” Which was not so very wonderful after all, seeing that the mother in Agnes’s book was but a delicate, shy, half-conscious sketch of this dearest mother of her own. “I think it ought to be taken to somebody to-morrow,” repeated Marian stoutly, “and published every month with pictures. How strange it would be to read in the newspapers how everybody wondered about the new book, and who wrote it!--such fun!--for nobody but _us_ would know.” Agnes all this time remained very silent, receiving everybody’s opinion--and Charlie also locked up his wisdom in his own breast. There was a pause, for Papa, feeling that his supreme opinion was urgently called for, took time to ponder upon it, and was rather afraid of giving a deliverance. The silence, however, was broken by the abrupt intervention, when nobody expected it, of the big boy. “Make it up into a parcel,” said Master Charlie with business-like distinctness, “and look in the papers what name you’ll send it to, and I’ll take it to-morrow.”