Doctor Cupid: A Novel

Ich komme, Ich weiss nicht woher; Ich gehe, Ich weiss nicht wohin; Ich bin, Ich weiss nicht was; Mich wundert dass Ich so fröhlich bin
Sir Philip Sidney

'There! I do not think that the joys and sorrows of living in a little house under the shadow of a big one were ever more lucidly set forth,' says an elder sister, holding up the slate on which she has just been totting up this ingenious debit and credit account to a pink junior, kneeling, head on hand, beside her; a junior who, not so long ago, did sums on that very slate, and the straggle of briony round whose sailor-hat tells that she has only just left the sunburnt harvest-fields and the overgrown August hedgerows behind her.
'We have had a good deal of fun out of it too,' says she, rather remorsefully. 'Do you remember'—with a sigh of recollected enjoyment—'the day that we all blackened our faces with soot, and could not get the soot off again afterwards?'
To what but a mind of seventeen could such a reminiscence have appeared in the light of a departed joy?
'I have left out an item, I see,' says Margaret, running her eye once again over her work; 'an unlimited quantity of the society of Freddy Ducane, when nothing better turns up for him! Under which head, profit or loss'—glancing with a not more than semi-amused smile at her sister—'am I to enter it, eh, Prue?'
'Loss, loss!' replies Prue, with a suspiciously rosy precipitation. 'No question about it; no one makes us lose so much time as he! Loss, loss!'
Margaret's eyes rest for an instant on her sister's face, and then return not quite comfortably to the slate, upon which she painstakingly inscribes the final entry, 'An unlimited quantity of Freddy Ducane's society, when nothing better turns up for him!'
' The acquaintance of several damaged fine ladies! ' reads Prue over her sister's shoulder. 'I suppose that means Lady Betty?'
'I name no names,' replies Margaret gravely. 'I keep to a discreet generality—