A breathless silence for at least two minutes, then, flushed with victory, Doris rises from the floor and is about to lay her plate on the table, when, lo! another loud pop. Whereupon Dick rushes over with great violence to the spot where his sister is standing, and knocking against her in his efforts to reach the prize first, Doris loses her balance, and clutching wildly at the back of a chair which Daisy is sitting on and tilting back comfortably, down come Daisy, chair, Doris, and nuts, all in an indiscriminate heap on the floor. Loud exclamations arise on all sides, and a pitiful howl is wrung from Daisy, who has planted her hand, in falling, on an almost red-hot chestnut. Doris does not attempt to get up, but, still sitting where she has arrived in such summary fashion, she rates Dick soundly for his ungallant behaviour, her voice subsiding into a sort of wail as she concludes with the remark, "And now I suppose I shall have to do my hair again, you wretched boy. I can't appear before every one like this. Look here!" and giving her head a shake forward, down comes the pretty erection of golden curls which half an hour ago had crowned so becomingly the small neat head.
"Bless me!" exclaims the incorrigible boy, "I quite forgot my lady is to grace the festive board downstairs to-night. But don't you tell me, Miss Doris, that you wouldn't have done your hair again anyhow! I know what a time girls take dressing, and my name is not Dick Merivale if you don't spend a good hour this evening pranking and prinking before the glass."
"Help me up, Dick, and don't talk so much," says Doris, quietly ignoring this tirade; "and now, if you have quite finished and will be kind enough to let Honor speak, I shall be glad. To my certain knowledge she has been trying to make herself heard for the last five minutes."
The noise having now subsided, a clear, gentle voice is heard from the neighbourhood of the fireplace, where Honor is kneeling beside the afflicted Daisy and examining the small burn caused by the hot chestnut.
"I was only saying, Doris, that if Lane is too busy with mother to help you I will turn lady's-maid and do your hair and dress you. Molly, do put down that poker."
"You're a dear!" exclaims impetuous Doris throwing her arms round Honor's neck. "I would ever so much rather you helped me than Lane. She's so prim and fussy. Where is Lucy, though?—mother will not want them both."
"O, I meant to tell you. Her sister is worse again, so mother let her go home to see her. Now let us have these chestnuts if we're going to. Pull your chairs up to the fire again and let us be cosy. Good gracious, what an untidy rug you've made! What would Miss Denison say if she saw it? Dick, my boy, you will have to mend your manners before she returns, or she will be looking every hour of the day in that quiet way of hers which speaks such volumes. Really I am glad she is coming back to-morrow, for I have had about enough of keeping order, or trying to, since she left."
"Why didn't she appoint me commander-in-chief?" says Doris, pouting over the skinning of a still-hot nut. "I am the eldest, though no one ever seems to think so."
"Because you are such a scatter-brained piece of goods," puts in her polite brother. "No one with a grain of sense would ever credit your being the elder by twelve, nay, thirteen months. Why, Honor looks a hundred compared to you!"
"Thanks, Dick. You are monstrously polite this afternoon," said Honor quietly. "In what consists my antiquity, pray?—has my hair turned white? or have I lost all my front teeth?"