know I feel quite frightened. What shall we do alone in London with no one to look after us?”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Miss Semaphore crossly. “We have only to consider our appearance. We shan’t really be so ridiculously young, you know. I have no doubt we shall retain our present minds and experience, and be perfectly well able to manage for ourselves. Of course I shall make all enquiries to-morrow as to the effects and act accordingly. And for goodness sake, Prudie, if it is successful, don’t keep remembering and talking about things that you could not possibly have seen or known if you were really only eighteen. That is just the sort of stupid thing you are likely to do. We must carefully look out the proper date and avoid remembering anything before that.”

“Don’t you think, dear,” said Miss Prudence after a pause, “it will be well to go away from here before trying the experiment, away to some place where we are not known? It will be so awkward else.”

49“Yes,” said Miss Semaphore reflectively, “I suppose it would be better; but we can consider that to-morrow, and now I am quite tired. It is time for us both to go to bed.”

49

The sisters duly undressed and sought repose, but for a long time none came. The future was too full of bewildering possibilities. Each felt that she ought not to let her mind dwell on what might never come to pass. Mrs. Geldheraus might be an imposter, the Water of Youth a fraud. Still, supposing—there was no harm in supposing—supposing both were genuine, what a delightful prospect. To be at once young and experienced; could anything surpass it? Pitfalls might be avoided, amusement sought, courses of conduct followed after a fashion impossible to anyone who was eighteen or twenty for the first and only time in life. To get all one’s chances over again, and to be assured of missing none of them, what luck! what unexampled good fortune!

Rosy visions of what they would do intruded on both of them, but we grieve to state that the wildest and flightiest of these visions were those of the elder Miss Semaphore. Were her eyes or those of her sister ever to light on these lines, were there a 50chance that her acquaintances might see this veracious history, we should hesitate to set her fancies down, and this for two reasons. First, because Miss Semaphore herself would be confused and confounded to a painful degree, and this, as she is an excellent if somewhat hard woman, we have no wish to bring about. Second, because her sister and friends 

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