To-day we have _all_ cried--boys and all; and have moistened the bun-loaf and the gooseberry-jam at tea with our tears.

Our spirits being now temporarily revived, I am undergoing the operation of trying my wedding-dress.

I am having a private rehearsal, in fact, in mother's boudoir, with only mother, Barbara, and the maid, for audience.
"Mine is the most hopeless kind of ugliness," say I, with an admirable dispassionateness, as if I were talking of some one else, as, armed in full panoply, I stand staring at my white reflection in a long mirror let into the wall--staring at myself from top to toe--from the highest jasmine star of my wreath to the lowest edge of my Brussels flounce.

"If I were very fat, I might fine down; if I were very thin, I might plump up; if I were very red, I might grow pale; if I were--hush! here are the boys.

I would not for worlds that they should see me!" So saying, I run behind the folding-screen--the screen which, through so many winter evenings, we have adorned with gay and ingenious pictures, and which, after having worked openly at it under her nose for a year and a half, we presented to mother _as a surprise_, on her last birthday.
"Come out, ostrich!" cries Algy, laughing.