'Come,' said the fairy, with a much pleasanter smile, 'you are not a hopeless case, at all events. It shall be as you wish, then, and perhaps it will be the wisest arrangement for all parties. Now run away home, and see how little use you can make of your fairy gift.' Priscilla found her family still at breakfast. 'Why,' observed her father, raising his eyebrows as she entered the room, 'here's our little monitor--(or is it _monitress_, eh, Priscilla?)--back again. Children, we shall all have to mind our p's and q's--and, indeed, our entire alphabet, now!' 'I'm sure,' said her mother, kissing her fondly, 'Priscilla knows we're all delighted to have her home!' '_I'm_ not,' said Alick, with all a boy's engaging candour. 'Nor am I,' added Betty, 'it's been ever so much nicer at home while she's been away!' Priscilla burst into tears as she hid her face upon her mother's protecting shoulder. 'It's true!' she sobbed, 'I don't deserve that you should be glad to see me--I've been hateful and horrid, I know--but, oh, if you'll only forgive me and love me and put up with me a little, I'll try not to preach and be a prig any more--I will truly!' And at this her father called her to his side and embraced her with a fervour he had not shown for a very long time. * * * * * I should not like to go so far as to assert that no imitation diamond, ruby, pearl, or emerald ever proceeded from Priscilla's lips again. Habits are not cured in a day, and fairies--however old they may be--are still fairies; so it _did_ occasionally happen that a mock jewel made an unwelcome appearance after one of Priscilla's more unguarded utterances. But she was always frightfully ashamed and abashed by such an accident, and buried the imitation stones immediately in a corner of the garden. And as time went on the jewels grew smaller and smaller, and frequently dissolved upon her tongue, leaving a faintly bitter taste, until at last they ceased altogether and Priscilla became as pleasant and unaffected a girl as she who may now be finishing this history. Aunt Margarine never sent back the contents of that bandbox; she kept the biggest stones and had a brooch made of them, while, as she never mentioned that they were false, no one out of the family ever so much as suspected it. But, for all that, she always declared that her niece Priscilla had bitterly disappointed her expectations--which was perhaps the truest thing that Aunt Margarine ever said. _A MATTER OF TASTE_ PART I