“It wouldn’t have mattered half so much if it had been Peggy’s face that was spoiled,” continued Mellicent with cruel outspokenness, “and it is only her hands that are hurt. Things always go the wrong way in this world! I never saw anything like it. You know that night-dress bag I was working for mother, Peggy? Well, I only got two skeins of the blue silk, and then if I didn’t run short, and they hadn’t any more in the shop. The other shades don’t match at all, and it looks simply vile. I am going to give it to—ahem! I mean that’s the sort of thing that always happens to me—it makes me mad! You can’t sew at all, I suppose. What do you do with yourself all day long now that you are able to get up?” Peggy’s eyes twinkled. “I sleep,” she said slowly, “and eat, and sleep a little more, and eat again, and talk a little bit, roll into bed, and fall fast asleep. Voilà tout, ma chère! C’est ça que je fais tous les jours.” Rosalind gave a shriek of laughter at Peggy’s French, and Mellicent rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “How s—imply lovely!” she sighed. “I wish I were you! I’d like to go to bed in November and stay there till May. In a room like this of course, with everything beautiful and dainty, and a maid to wait upon me. I’d have a fire and an india-rubber hot-water bottle, and I’d lie and sleep and wake up every now and then and make the maid read aloud, and bring me my meals on a tray. Nice meals! Real, nice invalidy things, you know, to tempt my appetite.” Mellicent’s eyes rolled instinctively to the table where the jelly and the grapes stood together in tempting proximity. She sighed, and brought herself back with an effort to the painful present. “Goodness, Peggy, how funny your hands look! Just like a mummy! What do they look like when the bandages are off? Very horrible?” “Hideous!” Peggy shrugged her shoulders and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I am going to try to grow old as fast as I can, so that I can wear mittens and cover them up. I’m really rather distressed about it because I am so—so addicted to rings, don’t you know. They have been a weakness of mine all my life, and I’ve looked forward to having my fingers simply loaded with them when I grew up. There is one of mother’s that I especially admire, a big square emerald surrounded with diamonds. She promised to give it to me on my twenty-first birthday, but unless my hands look very different by that time, I shall not want to call attention to them. Alack-a-day! I fear I shall never be able to wear a ring——” “Gracious goodness! Then you can never be married!” ejaculated Mellicent in a tone of such horrified dismay, as evoked a shriek of merriment from the listeners, Peggy’s merry trill sounding clear above the rest. It was just delicious to be well again, to sit among her companions and have one of the old hearty laughs over Mellicent’s quaint speeches. At that moment she was one of the happiest girls in all the world! (_To be continued._) VARIETIES. HOW TO READ.