Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/364

344 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