"No; but she didn't keep me from coming. Whenever any one
of us does anything improper we always say to each other, 'It's
Georgiana's fault. She ought not to have taught us to be so simple
and unconventional.'"

"And is she the family governess?"

"She governs the family. There doesn't seem to be any real
government, but we all do as she says. You might think at first
that Georgiana was the most light-headed member of the family, but
she isn't. She's deep. I'm shallow in comparison with her. She
calls me sophisticated, and introduces me as the elder Miss Cobb,
and says that if I don't stop reading Scott's novels and learn
more arithmetic she will put white caps on me, and make me walk to
church in carpet slippers and with grandmother's stick."

"But you don't seem to have stopped, Miss Sylvia."

"No; but I'm stopping. Georgiana always gives us time, but we get
right at last. It was two years before she could make my brother
go to West Point. He was wild and rough, and wanted to raise
tobacco, and float with it down to New Orleans, and have a good
time. Then when she had gotten him to go she was afraid he'd come
back, and so she persuaded my mother to live here, where there
isn't any tobacco, and where I could be sent to school. That took
her a year, and now she is breaking up my habit of reading nothing
but novels. She gets us all down in the end. One day when she
and Joe were little children they were out at the wood-pile, and
Georgiana was sitting on a log eating a jam biscuit, with her feet
on the log in front of her. Joe had a hand-axe, and was chopping