A World of Girls by L.T. Meade

In the morning Dora Russell sat down as usual before her orderly and neatly-kept desk. She raised the lid to find everything in its place -- her books and exercises all as they should be, and her pet essay in a neat brown paper cover, lying just as she had left it the night before. She was really getting quite excited about her river, and as this was a half-holiday, she determined to have a good work at it in the afternoon. She was beginning also to experience that longing for an auditor which occasionally is known to trouble the breasts of genius. She felt that those graceful ideas, that elegant language, those measured periods, might strike happily on some other ears before they were read aloud as the great work of the midsummer holidays.

She knew that Hester Thornton was making what she was pleased to term a poor little attempt at trying for the same prize. Hester would scarcely venture to copy anything from Dora's essay; she would probably be discouraged, poor girl, in working any longer at her own composition; but Dora felt that the temptation to read "The River," as far as it had gone, to Hester was really too great to be resisted. Accordingly, after dinner she graciously invited Hester to accompany her to a bower in the garden, where the two friends might revel over the results of Dora's extraordinary talents.