“Your nose does very well,” said grandma, who overheard the remark. “Fortunately mere outline of feature is not everything; expression is much more.” And Persis was somewhat comforted, although she admired with the intenseness which was a distinctive characteristic of hers the beauty of her sisters. Nevertheless, her own simplicity and lack of consciousness gave her a charm which neither of the others possessed, and which won her more affection than she realized. She maintained, however, that Lisa was her mother’s pride, and that Mellicent was her father’s pet. There might have been some little truth in this; but it was quite as true that Grandma Estabrook and Persis thoroughly understood each other, and confidences passed between them of which the rest did not know. So, doubtless, it was a balance, so far as affections went.
“Now, my pretty maids,” said Mrs. Holmes, when Mellicent had laid aside her hat and books, “I have a piece of news to tell you. Sit there all in a row, so I can note the effect it will have upon you. Your father’s wards, Basil and Porter Phillips, arrived this morning very unexpectedly, and are to be with us all winter.” Then Mrs. Holmes laughed softly as she glanced from one to the other.
The girls caught sight of her merry face. “How did we look, mamma? Tell us. You took us so by surprise that we didn’t have a chance to put on politeness if we didn’t feel it,” said Persis. “How did we look?”
“Lisa, complacent; you, slightly vexed; Mellicent, resigned.”
“Then there is no use in our pretending to any other feelings. So please tell us how it all happened,” said Mellicent.
“Your father had a telegram just as he was leaving the house, and the boys came an hour later. Mrs. Phillips was called upon suddenly to go to California with her invalid sister, and there had been, as you know, some talk of the boys preparing for the university, so it was decided that they should enter the Latin school at once, and they packed up and came. They are rather young to go alone into a boarding-house; moreover, your father feels responsible for them and thinks he should have them under his eye.”
“I think it’s rather a cool proceeding, myself,” ventured Persis, “without so much as saying by your leave, to come swooping down on us in this fashion. Oh, dear!”
“How old are they, mamma?” asked Lisa, whose interest had caused her to alter her recumbent position on the lounge to one of alert attention.
“Basil is in his seventeenth year and Porter in his fourteenth.”
“There! I knew it. The middle-sized one always gets left. Porter will tag after Mell’s golden curls, and Basil will do honor to Lady Dignity. A girl of fourteen never has a chance if there is a baby on one side and a sweet sixteener on the other,” declared Persis.