essay on this attractive woman. To be sure, she only dipped into the diary, reading the description of the visit which Madame D’Arblay and her little boy paid to Queen Charlotte, as well as some of the earlier chapters,—notably where Miss Burney, when lady-in-waiting to the Queen, had so fine an opportunity to witness the trial of Warren Hastings. Some chapters from Irving’s “Life of Washington” also made a part of the programme. One of them contained the famous description of the great general crossing the Delaware, and the passage describing the “amphibious regiment ” made up of Marblehead men. There was a little poetry on the programme, too; for when, to Amy’s horror, Brenda admitted that she had never read “Evangeline,”—the only way to reinstate herself, of course, was to become acquainted as quickly as possible with the Acadian heroine.
“Cranford,” however, which earlier in the season Brenda had read of her own volition, was the book that she selected as the subject of the essay which Miss Crawdon had requested her pupils to have ready when school opened. Although this is not properly part of the present story, it may be said that not one, even of the older girls, had a brighter or more interesting essay; and her success so spurred Brenda on, that from that time composition-writing became one of her favorite exercises.
It is not to be supposed, of course, that until she met Amy, Brenda had never read any serious books. But such reading on her part had been fragmentary, while in summer she had rather made a rule for herself that
