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 being. In the following week’s number had appeared these memorable lines:

“Sweet Nancy.—So pleased, dear, with your little letter. Write to me quite freely. I love to help my girls.”

So Kitty wrote quite freely, and as honestly as any girl of eighteen ever writes: her hopes and fears, her household troubles, her literary ambitions. And in the columns of the Girls’ Very Own Friend Aunt Kate replied with all the tender grace and delightful warmth that characterised her utterances.

The idea of calling on Aunt Kate occurred to Kitty as she was “putting on her things” to go to the Guildhall. She instantly threw the plain “everyday” hat from her, and pulled her best hat from its tissue-paper nest in the black bandbox. She put on her best blouse—the cream-coloured one with the browny lace on it, and her best brown silk skirt. She recklessly added her best brown shoes and gloves, and the lace pussy-boa. (I don’t know what the milliner’s name for the thing is. It goes round the neck, and hangs its soft and fluffy ends down nearly to one’s knees.) Then she looked at herself in the