sisterly feeling that held us together.

Eustace was restless and vexed at not being called upon, and anxious
to show himself on any occasion, and I was almost equally anxious to
keep him back, out of reach of mortification. Both he and Harold
went to London on business, leaving Dora with me. The charge was
less severe than I expected. My first attempts at teaching her had
been frustrated by her scorn of me, and by Harold's baffling
indulgence; but one day, when they had been visiting one of the
farms, the children had been made to exhibit their acquirements,
which were quite sufficient to manifest Dora's ignorance. Eustace
had long declared that if she would not learn of me she must either
have a governess or go to school, and I knew she was fit for neither.
Harold, I believe, now enforced the threat, and when he went away,
left her a black silk necktie to be hemmed for him, and a toy book
with flaming illustrations, with an assurance that on her reading it
to him on his return, depended his giving her a toy steam-engine.

Dora knew that Harold kept his word, even with her. I think she had
a great mind to get no one's assistance but the kitchenmaid's, but
this friendship was abruptly terminated by Dora's arraying the
kangaroo in Sarah's best bonnet and cloak, and launching it upon a
stolen interview between her and her sweetheart. The screams brought
all the house together, and, as the hero was an undesirable party who
had been forbidden the house, Sarah viewed it as treachery on Miss
Dora's part, and sulked enough to alienate her.

Dora could make out more to herself in a book than she could read
aloud, and one day I saw her spelling over the table of degrees of
marriage in a great folio Prayer-Book, which she had taken down in