“Well, to you, perhaps not. It may be rather mortifying. My sweet Sophia, you are the eldest of us, but your younger sister has stolen a march on you. You have played your cards ill, Miss Courtenay. Fanny is going to be the first of us married, unless I contrive to run away with somebody in the interval. I don’t know whom—there’s the difficulty.”
“Well, I always thought she would be,” said Sophy, quite good-humouredly. “She is the prettiest of us, is Fanny.”
“So much obliged for the compliment!” gleefully cried Hatty. “Cary, don’t you feel delighted?”
“Is Ephraim here now?” I said, for of course I never thought of anybody else.
“Ephraim!” Hatty whirled round, laughing heartily. “Ephraim, my dear, will have to break his heart at leisure. Ambrose Catterall has stolen a march on him.”
“You don’t mean that Fanny and Ambrose are to be married!” cried Sophy, with wide-open eyes.
“I do, Madam; and my Aunt Kezia is as mad as a hatter about it. She would have liked Ephraim for her nephew ever so much better than Ambrose.”
“Well, I do think!” exclaimed Sophy. “If Ephraim did really care for Fanny, she has used him shamefully.”
“So I think!” said Hatty. “I mean to present him on his next birthday with a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs, embroidered in the corner with an urn and a willow-tree.”
“An urn, you ridiculous child!” returned Sophy. “That means that somebody is dead.”