Persis laughed, but she was inwardly annoyed, and, jumping up, she opened the door which led into Mellicent’s little room, leaving her elder sister alone.
“Mell, I’m going to sleep with you,” she announced. “Lisa is on her high horse to-night, and there’s not room for her to canter around while I am there.”
Mellicent sleepily moved over to give Persis room. She was used to these little disturbances between her two sisters; and, although it was always Persis who left Lisa in possession, it was sometimes one and sometimes the other who received Mellicent’s sympathies. She was easily influenced, and any little appeal to her vanity, or a properly phrased remark as to the state of her health, generally won her favor. Therefore when Persis said, “I hope that taffy didn’t give you a headache,” she replied, “I had one this morning; but I’m quite used to them, you know.” This with a martyr-like air.
“So it’s a question of headache with or without taffy, isn’t it?” returned Persis, comfortably. “I’ll take mine with this time. Did you know, Mell, that I am going to ride a wheel? And if ever I get one of my own you shall share it with me for letting me share your bed, and Miss Lisa can whistle for a ride.”
“Audrey is going to get a wheel,” Mellicent informed her sister.
“Is she? Then of course you’ll want to ride with her. Well, I’ll teach you, and you shall use mine—when I get it. Oh, don’t you hope we can have one?”
“I didn’t care till Audrey made up her mind about it,” returned Mellicent.
“What a loyal little subject you are! What makes you like Audrey so much?”
“Why, Persis, she is so lovely, and you know she thinks she is descended from the same family of Vanes as that to which Sir Harry Vane belonged. Don’t you know, that dear Sir Harry whose statue we saw in the Boston Public Library last summer? It is so dreadful to think of his having been beheaded.”
“Yes, so it is, but I don’t see that it adds anything special to Audrey’s attractions. I think I must hunt up a headless ancestor. I wonder if we haven’t one hanging somewhere on our family tree.”