"Well, you are not; she's altogether different. But what's this?" cried Lucian, picking up a paper from the table.
"Oh, that's one of Priscilla's last year's essays. It's perfectly splendid, and she thought it might help me to look it over."
"Why don't you get her to help you in some other way?"
"Oh, that wouldn't do. We're supposed to do this all alone. It's a kind of test. You see the little themes are different. We write accounts of things we see, or that somebody tells us; but Miss Crawdon likes things we observe, and I am always seeing something funny. Everyone laughs at what I write. But I just can't do a long logical essay, and I don't want mine to be the very worst in the class."
"Of course not." Lucian's tone was more sympathetic than usual. "There can't be any harm in my helping you." And he took up a pencil.
"I'm not sure," responded Martine; "but still a brother, I suppose, is different from anyone else."
"Naturally," said Lucian, undisturbed by any scruples.
In a moment the two were at work, or rather Lucian was working, while Martine listened intently.
"First of all," he began, in a professorial manner, "you must think out your subject carefully and sub-divide it—so—and so. Then, well, whenever you have a thought, write it down on a piece of paper or a card—if I were you I'd buy a box of blank cards." Martine instantly resolved to pay a visit to a wholesale stationer's, and Lucian spent a few moments in cogitation and then wrote down a number of headings on small squares of paper. He had never before had so good a chance to expose the methods of his favorite English course.
"See, now, you kind of shuffle and arrange your headings, and you begin to think of other funny little things to put in, and write them out on large sheets, and before you know it, it's almost done. Now try."