Gwendoline, as she spoke, leant over and kissed Linnæa on the cheek, then ran away to find her bedroom.
“Funny, quiet little thing!” said Gwendoline as she went. “I wonder if I shall make good my words? She seemed almost workable to-night. I was prepared to brave a few snubs to begin with.”
And what about Linnæa? She did not begin to undress at once as usual. Why was she so excited to-night? Something had come over her, and it was nothing more nor less than a subtle magnetism towards this beautiful girl who had taken more notice of her than of any of the others—who had kissed her when she bade her good-night. Why had she felt so wooden and stupid? Why had she not returned the kiss? What must this girl think of her?
She was in bed at last, but could not sleep. She seemed to feel the kiss on her cheek and hear the voice saying they might be friends. By-and-by, when sleep came, she dreamt that her father and mother had come to school to take her home—the time she had looked forward to through all the seven years—and she told them she wanted to stay another year because Gwendoline had come.
(To be continued.)
[THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH: AUNT OF THE QUEEN.][2]
The letters of a favourite daughter of George III., and an aunt of the Queen, whose life extended through the eventful period 1770-1840, make a book of great interest and permanent value. The period referred to takes in some of the more momentous events in modern history—the loss of the American colonies, the French Revolution, the battle of Waterloo, and the fall of Napoleon—as well as various important parliamentary movements at home. Letter-writing is now generally supposed to be a lost art; but the Princess Elizabeth, as one who “ever remained an Englishwoman to the backbone,” wrote letters of the genuine old-time order to her confidante. She imposed wholesome restraint on herself in days when party spirit was more violent than we can realise; but being in fullest accord with her father, who aimed at personal government, her sympathy was rather for the cause of “Church and King than for that of reform and progress.” The Princess did not deal in scandal, however, she was not a politician, and in other respects she showed a delicacy of language not common in those times.
In reference to his heroine, Mr. Yorke says that “the familiarity of her style brings us all the closer to her, and the more familiar it is the more intimate becomes our friendship for her. Sometimes it is the case that where the style is most imperfect, there most appear the individuality and originality of the Princess, and her portrait drawn by herself must be of more value and interest to us than any accuracy or polish of diction.” The Princess also loved her friends, and this led her to write to them con amore, so that, as we read, “a whiff of old times is breathed upon us.” She was in the best sense a woman of her own times, one who inherited her father’s good qualities; and during the ailments of youth she proved her good constitution by surviving the medical treatment of the day. A girl of fifteen in these days may still be liable to congestion of the lungs, but what would she now say to being bled five times in forty-eight hours, to having to take “emetics every other day,” and to having her “backbones rubbed with musk?” In other respects the Princess seems to have been subjected to very old-fashioned treatment. Even at the age of twenty-six she was not allowed to read a book which her mother had not previously examined. Nor does she appear to have possessed an income of her own until she was forty-two years old. The Princess was six years older when she married Frederick VI. of Hesse-Homburg.