Many and many a shock has Fairy administered to a would-be partner. Did she ever read their consternation in their faces? Apparently never; for no matter who remained at home, Fairy could not endure to miss an entertainment, even a school feast or a children’s party. It was an unwritten family law that Fairy must always come first, must always be shielded, petted, indulged, amused, and no one subscribed to this rule more readily than the second Miss Gordon herself. She was keenly alive to her own beauty, and talked frankly to her intimates of her charms; but she never once referred to her short stature, and her sisters but rarely alluded to the fact between themselves, and then with bated breath. Even six inches would have made all the difference in the world; but four feet four was—well, remarkable. Of course the neighbours were accustomed to Fairy—a too suggestive name. They remembered her quite a little thing, a lovely spoilt child, a child who had never grown up. She was still a little thing, and yet she was a woman—a woman with a sharp tongue and a despotic temper. Fairy had true fairy-like fingers. She embroidered exquisitely, and made considerable sums doing church needlework, which sums were exclusively devoted to the decoration of her own little person. She was also a capital milliner and amateur dressmaker; but she had no taste for music, literature, housekeeping, or for any of the “daily rounds, the common tasks.” She left all those sort of things to her sisters.
Honor, the youngest Miss Gordon, is twenty years of age, slight, graceful, and tall—perhaps too tall. She might have spared some inches to her small relative, for she measures fairly five feet eight inches. She has an oval face, dark grey eyes, dark hair, and a radiant smile. In a family less distinguished by beauty she would have been noteworthy. As it is, some people maintain that in spite of Fairy’s marvellous colouring and faultless features, they see more to admire in her younger sister—for she has the beauty of expression. Honor is the useful member of the family. Jessie could not arrange flowers, cut out a dress, or make a cake, to save her life. Honor can do all these. She has a sort of quick, magic touch. Everything she undertakes looks neat and dainty, from a hat to an apple-pie. Her inexhaustible spirits correspond with her gay, dancing eyes, and she is the life and prop of the whole establishment. She plays the violin in quite a remarkable manner. Not that she has great execution, or can master difficult pieces, but to her audience she and her violin seem one, and there is a charm about her playing that listeners can neither explain nor resist.
The youngest Miss Gordon has her faults. Chief of these, is an undesirable bluntness and impudent recklessness of speech—a deplorable fashion of introducing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, no matter how unwelcome or how naked—and a queer, half-absent, and wholly disconcerting way of thinking aloud.
Her friends (who are many) declare that she is young, and will grow out of these peculiarities, and at any rate she is by far the most popular of the three sisters!
One gusty March morning, the sea displayed towering grey waves, with cream-coloured crests, the rain beat noisily against the window in which Jessie Gordon stood waiting for the kettle to boil, and watching for the postman. Here he came at last, striding up the paved path in his shining oilskins, and with a thundering bang, bang! he is gone.
“The paper, a coal bill, and an Indian letter,” said Jessie to Fairy, who, wrapped in a shawl, was cowering over the fire. “I’ll take them upstairs whilst you watch the kettle.”
Mrs. Gordon always breakfasted in bed, to “save trouble,” she declared, but to whom she omitted to mention. She turned the letters over languidly, and exclaimed—
“One from India from Sara Brande. Wonders will never cease! What can she want? Well, let me have my tea at once, and when I have read her epistle, I will send it down to you. And, here—you can take the paper to Fairy.”
Jessie returned to her tea-making—she and Honor took the housekeeping week about. In the middle of breakfast, Susan stalked into the room—an unusual occurrence—and said—
“Miss Jessie, the mistress is after pulling down the bell-rope. I thought the house was on fire. You are to go upstairs to her this minute.”