“I’m not sure but that you have more real sentiment than your sisters,” replied Mrs. Holmes, as she disengaged herself from the close hold of her daughter’s arms.
“I?” exclaimed Persis, opening her eyes very wide. “Why, mamma, I am the most practical child you have. Don’t I fly into the kitchen when Prue is out, and with real housewifely mind make gingerbread and ‘other country messes,’ like the neat-handed Phyllis in L’Allegro? And doesn’t papa always send me to pay bills when he cannot go himself? And—why, mamma, I’m not queenly like Lisa, nor seraphic like Mellicent. I am just plain me, the least good-looking of your trio. I am the mortal, Lisa the queen, Mellicent the fairy. But a mortal can love you just as hard; can’t she, mamma?”
“Very hard,” laughed her mother, as a kindling glance of Persis’s eye showed signs of a second energetic attack.
“I spare you, mamma! I spare you,” began Persis. “Here comes Lisa. I must go and hunt up something to eat. I am half starved. Heigho, Miss Dignity! I beat you home, didn’t I?”
“I should hope so, if it depended upon my making a tom-boy of myself in order to get here first,” replied Lisa, lifting her hat from off her well-set little head. “Mamma, you have no idea what a terror Persis is. She romps home like a great hulk of a peasant girl.”
“Lisa was so mad because I tagged her ‘last,’” laughed Persis. “Lady Dignity was covered with confusion to that extent that you could scarcely see her.”
“Mamma, do make her behave properly,” entreated Lisa. “I shall choose some one else with whom to walk if this continues,” she said, imperiously, to her sister, who made a little grimace and escaped from the room.
“Persis is perfectly incorrigible,” continued Lisa, giving a gentle pat to the curling locks about her temples as she glanced toward the mirror.
“Oh, never mind her, dear,” advised her mother; “she is full of life and as spontaneous as the flowers that grow. I don’t believe in too much self-repression. How is Mellicent’s headache?”
“Headache! She trumped it up. I don’t believe she had any to speak of. It wasn’t so bad but what she could traipse all the way home in the sun with Audrey Vane.”