This is not fickleness; it is Nature; and there is a natural remedy--progress. If day by day your shores--to use Emerson's simile--widen, if you will not allow your mind to remain at a standstill, like the stagnant pond, but are constantly receiving and constantly using varied stores of knowledge and experience, you need not fear to crush your friend by the discovery of your limitations. She will have to progress too, if she is to come up with that; and as there is no reasonable probability that you will advance in precisely the same direction, you will each find increasing interest and help in the other's society. One thing more the ideal friendship needs, but it is one most girls' friendships, whether ideal or not, possess. I mean confidence. It is not till the twenties are well into that reserve and reticence take their place in a woman's friendship; it is not till then that she questions with herself how far she will trust her friend with her hopes, fears, and troubles. The younger we are, the more generous, trusting, and unsuspicious we are; which is, I suppose, the great reason why we never make such particular friends when the period of trust is past. If your friend is worthy of the name, trust her wholly. How can you sympathise with or help one another if you only tell half your troubles and difficulties? I do not mean that all should wear their hearts upon their sleeves. Every girl has, and should have, her private sanctuary of thought, where none may enter; but in the matters which are discussed between friends let there be no half-confidences. I have tried to sketch what I call an ideal friendship. If they are rare, they are possible--most possible if you only study their construction. I think all thoughtful and imaginative girls long for this ideal friendship; but I wonder if they all reflect that the ideality does not all depend on the friend, but on themselves. If it takes two most emphatically to make a quarrel, it needs two to make a friendship. Do your best to make it ideal. I have known such a friendship; I know that it is possible; and I know that it is one of the most perfect experiences our life can give us. You do not need to live exceptional lives in order to love, sympathise, and help. Experience is the best teacher, and gives lessons to all. Use that intelligently as a means of moral, mental, spiritual progress, remembering that it does not come to you by chance, but rather as the work of "The hands Which reach through Nature, moulding men." (_To be continued._) MERLE'S CRUSADE. BY ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY, Author of "Aunt Diana," "For Lilias," etc. CHAPTER II. AN UNPREACHED SERMON.