It was hard to have to tell her that there was not, and that, if ever such a word as “magnanimosity” shall be, it will certainly not be a word for “kindness.” Have you noticed that a big girl mostly has a small girl for her friend, and _vice versâ_? Shakespeare, who noticed all things, noticed that. With Helena he puts Hermia, and with Rosalind Celia. The tall girls of prose-fiction are numerous. For _A_ there is Blackmore’s Annie, who “never tried to look away when honest people gazed at her.” For _B_ there is Thackeray’s Beatrix, and there is one for every other letter in the alphabet. The “towering big” girl—to put the matter Hibernically—had a great vogue a few years ago as the heroine of _Trilby_, but, on the whole, the small girl has been more singled out for loving treatment by novelists than the tall girl. Dickens had a known preference for her, and his “little Nell” has eclipsed all big Nells. In the description of one Ruth, too, it may be noticed that he uses with loving iteration the word “little”—“pleasant little Ruth! cheerful, tidy, bustling, quiet little Ruth!” In fiction subsequent to that of Dickens there is a Mary described thus—“a little dumpty body, with a yellow face and a red nose, the smile of an angel, and a heart full of many little secrets of other people’s, and of one great one of her own, which is no business of any man’s.” [Illustration: A TALL STORY] All readers of Kingsley’s _Two Years Ago_ will remember that Mary. The poets no less than the prose-writers have busied themselves with the small girl. The mere word _Duchess_ to most people calls up a picture of stateliness, yet Browning describes a duchess as follows:— “She was the smallest lady alive.” In these days of tall girls small girls are apt to fret. There is one known to me whose case is pitifuller than that of the little fir-tree in Andersen. That little fir-tree, you will remember, thought of nothing so much as growing. The children sitting beside it would often exclaim, “How pretty and little it is!” _It could not bear to hear that_, says Andersen. [Illustration: It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make men better be BEN JONSON] The case of the little girl known to me is just by so much sadder than that of the little fir-tree that she knows that her growing days are over. When last I saw her she was trying to give length to herself by a long tail to her dress, but the world was not deluded thus, and measured her, as naturalists measure the mouse, “not including the tail.” Happily a major number of small girls still carry a high heart, knowing that maids, as well as men, may be “little, very little, but not insignificant.” Those words are Sir Walter Scott’s in reference to Thomas Moore, whose pseudonym, it may be remembered, was at one time Thomas Little.