The girls drew near with eager interest, and Mab took up in her artist's fingers a great handful of the hair which lay upon her sister's shoulders. "Was mamma's like that?" she said in awe and wonder; and Cicely, too, fixed her eyes upon her own bright locks reverentially. It gave them a new strange feeling for their mother to think that she had once been a girl like themselves. Strangest thought for a child's mind to grasp; stranger even than the kindred thought, that one day those crisp half-curling locks, fall of threads of gold, would be blanched like the soft braids under Mrs. St. John's cap. "Poor mamma!" they said simultaneously under their breath. "Brighter than that!" said Miss Maydew, seeing across the mists of years a glorified vision of youth, more lovely than Hester had ever been. "Ah, well!" she added with a sigh, "time goes very quickly, girls. Before you know, you will be old, too, and tell the young ones how pretty you were long ago. Yes, Miss Audacity! you mayn't believe it, but I was pretty, too." "Oh yes, I believe it!" cried Mab, relieved from the momentary gravity which had subdued her. "You have a handsome nose still, and not nearly so bad a mouth as most people. I should like to draw you, just as you stood under the beech-tree; that was beautiful!" she cried, clapping her hands. Miss Maydew was pleased. She recollected how she had admired the two young creatures under that far-spreading shade; and it did not seem at all unnatural that they should in their turn have admired her. "Mabel! Mabel!" said Miss Brown, who knew better, lifting a warning finger. Miss Maydew took up the sketch-book which Cicely had laid on the rough table in the summer-house. "Is this what you were all talking about?" she said. But at this moment the governess withdrew and followed Cicely into the house. She walked through the garden towards the rectory in a very dignified way. She could not stand by and laugh faintly at caricatures of herself as some high-minded people are capable of doing. "I hope Miss Maydew will say what she thinks very plainly," she said to Cicely, who flew past her in a great hurry with a fresh clean white napkin out of the linen-press. But Cicely was much too busy to reply. As for Mab, I think she would have escaped too, had she been able; but as that was impossible, she stood up very demurely while her old aunt turned over the book, which was a note-book ruled with blue lines, and intended for a more virtuous purpose than that to which it had been appropriated; and it was not until Miss Maydew burst into a short but hearty laugh over a caricature of Miss Brown that Mab ventured to breathe. "You wicked little thing! Are these yours?" said Miss Maydew; "and how dared you let that poor woman see them? Why, she is there to the life!" "Oh! Aunt Jane, give me the book! She has never seen them: only a few innocent ones at the beginning. Oh! _please_ give me the book! I don't want her to see them!" cried Mab.