mind."

Jessie opened her eyes widely, but she did not at once reply; she
was not, strictly speaking, a clever girl, and did not at once grasp
any new idea; our conversations were generally rather one-sided. Emma
Hardy, who was our school wag, once observed that I used Jessie's
brains as an airing-place for my ideas. Certainly Jessie listened
more than she talked, but then, she listened so sweetly.

"Of course, Alfred the Great, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Princess
Elizabeth of France, and all the heroes and heroines of old time--all
the people who did such great things and lived such wonderful lives
--may be said to have had great minds; but I am not thinking about
them. I want to know what makes a great mind, and how one is to get
it. There is Carrie, now, you know how good she is; I think she may
be said to have one."

"Carrie--your sister?"

"Why, yes," I returned, a little impatiently; for certainly Jessie
could not think I meant that stupid, peevish little Carrie Steadman,
the dullest girl in the school; and whom else should I mean, but
Carrie, my own dear sister, who was two years older than I, and who
was as good as she was pretty, and who set us all such an example of
unworldliness and self-denial; and Jessie had spent the Christmas
holidays at our house, and had grown to know and love her too; and
yet she could doubt of whom I was speaking; it could not be denied
that Jessie was a little slow.

"Carrie is so good," I went on, when I had cooled a little, "I am