No doubt it was hard sometimes to hear music sounding from the open windows of the great house in the square, where their old schoolfellow, Miss Robinson, had come to live, and to see the carriages arriving, and all the glory of the ball-dresses, of which the two young governesses got a glimpse as they went out for a stroll on the beach in the summer twilight, an indulgence which Miss Blandy disapproved of. "Now, why should people be so different?" Cicely said, moralizing; "why should we have so little, and Alice Robinson so much? It don't seem fair." "And we are not even prettier than she is, or gooder--which we ought to be, if there is any truth in compensation," said Mab, with a laugh. "Or happier," said Cicely, with a sigh. "She has the upper hand of us in everything, and no balance on the other side to make up for it. Stay, though; she has very droll people for father and mother, and we have a very fine gentleman for our papa." "Poor papa!" said Mab. They interchanged moods with each other every ten minutes, and were never monotonous, or for a long time the same. "You may say why should people be so different," said Cicely, forgetting that it was herself who said it. "There is papa, now; he is delightful, but he is trying. When one thinks how altered everything is--and those two little babies. But yet, you know, we ought to ask ourselves, 'Were we happier at home, or are we happier here?'" "We have more variety here," said Mab decisively; "there is the sea, for one thing; there we had only the garden." "You forget the common; it was as nice as any sea, and never drowned people, or did anything dangerous; and the forest, and the sunset." "There are sunsets here," said Mab,--"very fine ones. We are not forgotten by the people who manage these things up above. And there is plenty of work; and the girls are amusing, and so are the parents."