"No need to say good-night, since we sleep in the same chamber," was the reply. Paulina Home's father was obliged to travel to recruit his health, and her mother being dead, Mrs. Bretton had offered to take temporary charge of the child. During the two months Paulina stayed with us, the one member of the household who reconciled her to absence from her father was John Graham Bretton, Mrs. Bretton's only child, a handsome, whimsical youth of sixteen. He began by treating her with mock seriousness as a person of consideration, and before long was more than the Grand Turk in her estimation; indeed, when a letter came from her father on the Continent, asking that his little girl might join him there, we wondered how she would take the news. I found her in the drawing-room engaged with a picture-book. "Miss Snowe," said she, "this is a wonderful book. It was given me by Graham. It tells of distant countries." "Polly," I interrupted, "should you like to travel?" "Not just yet," was the prudent answer; "but perhaps when I am grown a woman I may travel with Graham." "But would you like to travel now if your papa was with you?" "What is the good of talking in that silly way?" said she. "What is papa to you? I was just beginning to be happy." Then I told her of the letter, and the tidings kept her serious the whole day. When Graham came home in the evening, she whispered, as she heard him in the hall: "Tell him by-and-by; tell him I am going." But Graham, who was preoccupied about some school prize, had to be told twice before the news took proper hold of his attention. "Polly going?" he said. "What a pity! Dear little Mouse, I shall be sorry to lose her; she must come to us again." On going to bed, I found the child wide awake, and in what she called "dreadful misery!" "Paulina," I said, "you should not grieve that Graham does not care for you so much as you care for him. It must be so." Her questioning eyes asked why. "Because he is a boy and you are a girl; he is sixteen and you are only six; his nature is strong and gay, and yours is otherwise." "But I love him so much. He should love me a little." "He does. He is fond of you; you are his favourite." "Am I Graham's favourite?" "Yes, more than any little child I know." The assurance soothed her, and she smiled in her anguish. As I warmed the shivering, capricious little creature in my arms I wondered how she would battle with life, and bear its shocks, repulses, and humiliations. _II.--Madame Beck's School_ The next eight years of my life brought changes. My own household and that of the Brettons suffered wreck. My friends went abroad and were lost sight of, and I, after a period of companionship with a woman of fortune, found myself, at her death, with fifteen pounds in my pocket looking for a new place. Then it was that I saw mentally within reach what I had never yet beheld with my bodily eyes--I saw London.