Salome looked annoyed as she watched her mother's movements. Hannah had already taken her place at the table.
"There!" exclaimed Mrs. Tracy, holding up to view a tastefully made blue cotton blouse into which she had just set the last stitch. "How will that suit the child? She wants something cool to wear, now the weather has turned so warm."
"It is pretty," said Salome, in a tone which seemed to suggest that prettiness was a doubtful advantage.
"I do wonder, mother, when you will cease to think of Juliet as a child," said Hannah.
"Oh, not yet, I hope," said Mrs. Tracy cheerfully, pausing, to Salome's vexation, at the window to look up and down the road ere taking her place at the table. "After all, what is she but a child?" she added, as she turned towards the table.
"She was nineteen last February," said Hannah, in her most matter-of-fact tone. "I began to teach when I was nineteen."
"Ah, yes, my dear; but you were always so different from Juliet. And the youngest is usually more of a child than the others. Besides, you two are so much older. Why, you, Hannah, will be thirty on your next birthday."
"Yes, I shall be thirty," said Hannah calmly, with an air which said she was above being sensitive on the score of her age.
"Dear me, how old it makes me feel to think of having a daughter who is thirty!" observed Mrs. Tracy. "That is the worst of marrying young. You know, I was not twenty when I married your father. Why, how strange it seems! I was only a few months older than Juliet is now!"
"It is to be hoped that no one will be wanting to marry Juliet yet," said Salome, with a short laugh. "I should pity the man over whose household she presided."