"I know just how I want it done." The words may sound a little rude and dictatorial; but Lillie had the advantage of always looking so pretty, and saying dictatorial things in such a sweet voice, that everybody was delighted with them; and she took the matter of arranging the trimming in hand with a clearness of head which showed that it was a subject to which she had given mature consideration.

Mrs.Ellis shook her fat sides with a comfortable motherly chuckle.
"Lillie always did know exactly what she wanted: she's a smart little thing." And, when all the trying on and arranging of folds and frills and pinks and bows was over, Lillie threw herself comfortably upon the bed, to finish her letter.
Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn with which she laid down the missive.
[Illustration: "Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn."] "Seems to me your letters don't meet a very warm reception," she said.
"Well! every day, and such long ones!" Lillie answered, turning over the pages.

"See there," she went on, opening a drawer, "What a heap of them! I can't see, for my part, what any one can want to write a letter every day to anybody for.

John is such a goose about me." "He'll get over it after he's been married six months," said Miss Clippins, nodding her head with the air of a woman that has seen life.
"I'm sure I shan't care," said Lillie, with a toss of her pretty head.
"It's _borous_ any way." Our readers may perhaps imagine, from the story thus far, that our little Lillie is by no means the person, in reality, that John supposes her to be, when he sits thinking of her with such devotion, and writing her such long, "borous" letters.
She is not.

John is in love not with the actual Lillie Ellis, but with that ideal personage who looks like his mother's picture, and is the embodiment of all his mother's virtues.