‘Why, here’s Jack and Elly changing places,’ the curate would say, and no harm was done. The link between the two was, however, a very unusual one to exist between a boy and girl. They were like brother and sister, they were two comrades in the completest sense of the words, and yet they were something more. They were like each other’s second self in different conditions. Elly could not very well imagine what she would do were she Percy or Dick--who had strayed away from the habits of their home, into those of public schoolboys, members of a great corporation bound by other laws; but she thought she could quite imagine what she would do were she John, or Jack, as the young ones called him. It did not indeed enter into Jack’s mind to realise what he should do were he Elly; for that is one inalienable peculiarity of the human constitution that no male creature can put himself in the place of a woman, as almost all female creatures imaginatively place themselves in that of some man. It is the one intimate mark of constitutional superiority which makes the meanest man more self-important than the noblest woman. Elly knew exactly what she would do if she were John. It was like herself going out into the world, planning the future, foreseeing all that was to happen. If it had been possible for her to go out into the world too, and have a profession, which with a sigh of regret she acknowledged was not possible, she would have done it just as he was going to do it. His enthusiasm about lighthouses had indeed been struck out by Elly, who had read all about the Eddystone ‘in a book,’ as she said, and who thenceforward had done nothing but talk about it till she became a bore to her brothers, and set John’s congenial soul aflame. John and she talked between themselves about ‘the boys’ with a great deal of honest kindness, but perhaps just a little contempt--contempt is too hard, too unpleasant a word; but then toleration always implies this more or less. The boys got into scrapes: they thought of nothing but their shooting or their fishing: they were dreadfully bored on wet days, or when, as they said, there was ‘nothing to do.’ ‘Jack and I can always find something to do,’ Elly said. Perhaps it was after hearing one of these speeches that Mrs. Egerton, called at the rectory Aunt Mary, decided that Elly had carried her studies far enough, and had better now devote herself to feminine accomplishments, and carry on the lighter part of her education at home. This decision coincided in point of time with the resolution of Mr. and Mrs. Sandford to withdraw John from the curate’s charge; so that, though it had a certain dolorous character as a break-up, there was none of the painful feeling on either part of being sent away from those studies which another more fortunate was still carrying on.