About the same time, Joanna Huntley came home for the long summer holidays. Joanna had persuaded her father into giving her a pony, on which she trotted about everywhere unattended, to the terror of her mother and the disgust of Patricia, who was too timid for any such impropriety. Pony and girl together, on their rambles, were perpetually falling in with Cosmo Livingstone, whom Joanna rather meant to make a friend of, and to whom she could speak on one subject which occupied, at the present time, two thirds of her disorderly thoughts, and deafened, with perpetual repetition, the indifferent household of Melmar. This was Desirée. The first of first loves for a girl is generally another girl, or young woman, a little older than herself; and nothing can surpass the devotion of the worshiper. Desirée was only a year older than Joanna, but she was almost every thing which Joanna was not; and she was French, and had been in Paris and London, and was of a womanly and orderly temper, which increased the difference in years. She was, for the time being, Joanna’s supreme mistress, queen, and lady-love. “I’m very glad you saw her, Cosmo,” cried the girl, in one of their encounters, “because now you’ll know that what I say is true. They laugh at me at Melmar; and Patricia (she’s a cat!) goes on about her Clapham school, and says Desirée is only a little French governess--as if I did not know better than that!” “Is she a governess?” asked Cosmo. “She’s a lady!” said Joanna, reddening suddenly; “but she does not pay as much as we do; and she talks French with the girls, and sometimes she helps the little ones on with their music, and--but as for a governess like madame, or like Miss Trimmer, or even Mrs. Payne herself--she is no more like one of them than you are. Cosmo. I think Desirée would like you!” “Do you think so?” said Cosmo, with a boyish blush and laugh. Joanna, however, was far too much occupied to notice his shamefacedness. “I’ll tell you just what I would like,” she said, as they went on together, the pony rambling along at its own will, with the reins lying on its neck, while Cosmo, half-attracted, half-reluctant, walked by its side. “I don’t think I should tell you either,” said Joanna, “for I don’t suppose you care about us. Cosmo Livingstone, I am sure, if I were you, I would hate papa; but you’ll no’ tell--I would like Desirée to come here and marry my brother Oswald, and be lady of Melmar. I would not care a bit what became of _me_. Though she’s French, there’s nobody like her; and that’s just what I would choose, if I could choose for myself. Would it not be grand? But you don’t know Oswald--he’s been away nearly as long as I can mind; but he writes me letters sometimes, and I like him better than anybody else in the world.” “Where is he?” said Cosmo.