Veronica laughed at Ophelia, also, who was a superb, black-haired woman, toying with an elegant Spanish fan, which Hamlet in his energy broke.

"It is not Shakespeare," she said.
"Has she read Shakespeare ?" I asked mother.
"I am sure I do not know." That night, after mother and Veronica were asleep, I persuaded Temperance to get up, and bore my ears with a coarse needle, which I had bought for the purpose.

It hurt me so, when she pierced one, that I could not summon resolution to have the other operated on; so I went to bed with a bit of sewing silk in the hole she had made.

But in the morning I roused her, to tell her I thought I could bear to have the other ear bored.

When mother appeared I showed her my ears red and sore, insisting that I must have a certain pair of white cornelian ear-rings, set in chased gold, and three inches long, which I had seen in a shop window.