had so many stories to tell us of her adventures that I did not leave them
till after twelve o'clock."

"As Alice is by no means tongue-tied in the daytime, her adventures might
have kept, and if you went to bed in proper time, you might get half an
hour before breakfast. But what do you do after breakfast?"

"Oh, then the flowers want doing, and mamma always wants some notes to be
answered, and then it is so fine that we go for a walk, and don't get back
till after luncheon, and then visitors come, and I must be there to talk
to them; and when it gets cool, people come in for tennis, and as to
reading after that, why, one barely gets time to dress for dinner, and in
the evening they like me to play to them, and papa wants the paper read
to him, and you know, Aunt Rachel, you always said home duties ought to
come first, so I don't see when a girl at home is to read!"

"I quite agree with you about home duties, my dear; but, though many
things have changed since my day, home duties must have changed most of
all, if they now include chattering till midnight, and taking a two hours'
walk in the morning, on days when you are likely to get three hours'
tennis in the afternoon, and being obliged to play in the last set, so
that you cannot even go and dress a quarter of an hour too soon! It seems
to me that you might get these home duties done by eleven o'clock, and
then get an hour, or an hour and a half, for steady reading, or, if not so
much as that, still visitors do not come directly after luncheon: in fact,
I noticed that you got through two volumes of that new novel before any
one came. Now, that time would have done equally well for history, and
even when the boys are at home, their suspicions would not be much aroused
if you went to wash your hands for luncheon a quarter of an hour too soon,
and the same in the evening before dinner."