"Ah!" said Ethel, with a concluding sigh, "it makes one hotter than double equations!" It was all right, as Flora allowed with a slightly superior smile.

She thought Richard would never succeed in making a notable or elegant woman of Ethel, and it was best that the two sisters should take different lines.

Flora knew that, though clever and with more accomplishments, she could not surpass Ethel in intellectual attainments, but she was certainly far more valuable in the house, and had been proved to have just the qualities in which her sister was most deficient.

She did not relish hearing that Ethel wanted nothing but attention to be more than her equal, and she thought Richard mistaken.

Flora's remembrance of their time of distress was less unmixedly wretched than it was with the others, for she knew she had done wonders.
The next day Norman told Ethel that he had got on very well with the verses, and finished them off late at night.