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‘I always let it get a little cold, mother,’ replied the good little girl, ‘so that I mayn’t come to think too much about eating, you know.’

As she uttered this remark, she felt a jewel producing itself in some mysterious way from the tip of her tongue, and saw it fall with a clatter into her plate. ‘I’ll pretend not to notice anything,’ she thought.

‘Hullo!’ exclaimed Alick, pausing in the act of mastication, ‘I say–Prissie!’

‘If you ask mother, I’m sure she will tell you that it is most ill-mannered to speak with your mouth full,’ said Priscilla, her speech greatly impeded by an immense emerald.

‘I like that!’ exclaimed her rude brother; ‘who’s speaking with their mouth full now?‘

‘”Their” is not grammar, dear,’ was Priscilla’s only reply to this taunt, as she delicately ejected a pearl, ‘you should say her mouth full.’ For Priscilla’s grammar was as good as her principles.

‘But really, Priscilla, dear,’ said her mother, who felt some embarrassment at so novel an experience as being obliged to find fault with her little daughter, ‘you should not eat sweets just before dinner, and–and couldn’t you get rid of them in some other manner?’

‘Sweets!’ cried Priscilla, considerably annoyed at being so misunderstood, ‘they are not sweets, mother. Look!’ And she offered to submit one for inspection.

‘If I may venture to express an opinion,’ observed her father, ‘I would rather that a child of mine should suck sweets than coloured beads, and in either case I object to having them prominently forced upon my notice at meal-times. But I daresay I’m wrong. I generally am.’

‘Papa is quite right, dear,’ said her mother, ‘it is such a dangerous habit–suppose you were to swallow one, you know! Put them in the fire, like a good girl, and go on with your dinner.’

Priscilla rose without a word, her cheeks crimsoning, and dropped the pearl, ruby, and emerald, with great accuracy, into the very centre of the fire. This done, she returned to her seat, and went on with her dinner in silence, though her feelings prevented her from eating very much.

‘If they choose to think my pearls are only beads, or jujubes, or acidulated drops,’ she said to herself, bitterly, ‘I won’t waste any more on them, that’s all! I won’t open my lips again, except to say quite ordinary things–so there!’

If Priscilla had not been such a very good little girl, you might almost have thought she was in a temper; but she was not; her feelings were wounded, that was all, which is quite a different thing.

That afternoon, her aunt Margarine, Mrs. Hoyle, came to call. She was the aunt whom we have already mentioned as being given to insincerity; she was not well off, and had a tendency to flatter people; but Priscilla was fond of her notwithstanding, and she had never detected her in any insincerity towards herself. She was sent into the drawing-room to entertain her aunt until her mother was ready to come down, and her aunt, as usual, overwhelmed her with affectionate admiration. ‘How pretty and well you are looking, my pet!’ she began, ‘and oh, what a beautiful frock you have on!’

‘The little silkworms wore it before I did, aunt,’ said Priscilla, modestly.

‘How sweet of you to say so! But they never looked half so well in it, I’ll be bou—- Why, my child, you’ve dropped a stone out of a brooch or something. Look–on the carpet there!’

‘Oh,’ said Priscilla, carelessly, ‘it was out of my mouth–not out of a brooch, I never wear jewellery. I think jewellery makes people grow so conceited; don’t you, Aunt Margarine?’

‘Yes, indeed, dearest–indeed you are so right!’ said her aunt (who wore a cameo-brooch as large as a tart upon her cloak), ‘and–and surely that can’t be a diamond in your lap?’

‘Oh, yes, it is. I met a fairy this morning in the lane, and so—-‘ and here Priscilla proceeded to narrate her wonderful experience. ‘I thought it might perhaps make papa and mamma value me a little more than they do,’ she said wistfully, as she finished her story, ‘but they don’t take the least notice; they made me put the jewels on the fire–they did, really!’