But the Rowans were not the only ones who insisted on Edith’s visiting Boston at this time. Miss Clinton dictated a letter to Mr. Yorke, and Carl, suppressing his laughter, wrote it: “I have sent three times for that girl, and this is my last invitation to her. Why is she not allowed to come? Has she nothing to wear? I enclose a check for a gown and a pair of shoes. When she reaches here, I will give her what she may need to make her decent. Or is it that Amy Yorke is jealous because her own daughters are not invited? If one of them must come as company for Edith, I will pay her passage up, but I don’t want her here. She can go to Hester’s or Alice Mills’s. Melicent has too ridiculous an idea of her own consequence, and Clara is too sharp and impudent. Bird has read me her book, and I think it a very disagreeable book. She had better learn to cook and mend her stockings, and let writing alone.” “Have you finished?” the old lady asked, as Carl, with pen suspended, looked up from his writing. “Yes!” “Then sign my name.” “Shall I write ‘yours respectfully’ or ‘yours affectionately’?” Carl asked, with perfect gravity. “Neither!” she replied curtly. “Sign my name without any compliment.” “May I add a few lines for myself?” the young man asked, when he had signed the name as directed. “There is a whole page left.” “Yes.” The answer was given very softly, and a smile of singular sweetness flitted across the old lady’s face as she looked at the writer. Miss Clinton was very fond of Carl, in a tyrannical, tormenting, selfish way, and liked nothing so much as to have him ask favors of her. He wrote rapidly a few minutes, and was about closing the letter, when she stopped him. “Read me what you have written,” she said. Carl blushed slightly, and hesitated. “It was not written to read to you,” he answered. “No matter, it will be all the more interesting,” she persisted. “Read it! You read mine.” Carl hesitated yet a moment longer, then, casting his eyes up to the ceiling, read, as if he saw it written, in the painting there, a preposterous eulogy of Miss Clinton, with a minute account of her cat’s health. “I won’t have it!” she cried out. “Read what you have written there, or give it to me, and Bird shall come and read it. If you were a decent writer, I should have eyes enough left to read it myself.” Carl dropped his laughing manner. “Miss Bird will write a letter for you,” he said, and was about holding the one he had in the flame of a taper, when she stopped him. “Oh! send it as it is, since you are so stubborn; though I haven’t a doubt that you have written the most 18 dreadful things of me.” The Yorkes were highly amused by this letter. “You see, Edith, she is a dragon,” her uncle said. “You will have to carry yourself very gingerly.”