He smiled, saying, ‘You are a good correspondent.’
‘Oh! I must write. Annette and I were never apart before.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes, only a year older. We always did everything together.’
He ventured to look up, and saw a bright dew on a soft, shady pair of dark eyes, a sweet quivering smile on a very pretty mouth, and a glow of pure bright deep pink on a most delicately fair skin, contrasted with braids of dark brown hair. She was rather above the ordinary height, slender, and graceful, and the childish beauty of the form or face and features surprised him; but to his mind the chief grace was the shy, sweet tenderness, happy and bright, but tremulous with the recent pain of the parting from home. With a kindly impulse, he said, ‘You must tell me your name, Arthur has not mentioned it.’
‘Violet;’ and as he did not appear at once to catch its unusual sound, she repeated, ‘Violet Helen; we most of us have strange names.’
‘Violet Helen,’ he repeated, with an intonation as if struck, not unpleasingly, by the second name. ‘Well, that is the case in our family. My sister has an uncommon name.’
‘Theodora,’ said Violet, pausing, as if too timid to inquire further.
‘Have you only this one sister?’ he said.
‘Six, and one brother,’ said she, in a tone of exulting fondness. A short silence, and then the joyful exclamation, ‘There he is!’ and she sprang to the door, leaving it open, as her fresh young voice announced, full of gratulation, ‘Here’s your brother.’