Dolly turned from the washstand altar, her bouquet (the three small toothbrushes) in her hand. There was a sound of tears in the forlorn little sister’s voice that touched her conscience.
“[Isn’t zere a dog in the story?]”
“We might play Wobin Hood for a little time—eh, Phyl?” she said, unwillingly taking off her bridal veil and putting it back in her pocket. There were opportunities for shooting, a lively work in this game which led Weenie to tolerate it.
“All right,” Phyl said, also softened by the lonely tone in the small sister’s voice.
[34]
]Weenie scrambled energetically up a bedpost and hung there, showing her small gleaming teeth.
“We’re playing Zoo,” she said, swift to take advantage of the concession. “I am ze monkey, an’ Phyl can be ze effelunt, an’ Dolly’s ze tross old zrinoceros.”
The room was in an uproar speedily, Dolly and Phyl playing their allotted parts with great vigour and enjoyment. “We can be pwetending we’re pwincesses, an’ have been changed into these shapes,” Dolly seized a moment to whisper consolingly to Phyl. Then she swung herself over the foot-rail of the bed and hung head downwards and growled, which pleased Weenie’s ideas of realism even if it was hardly in accordance with the character of rhinoceros.
[35]
]CHAPTER III
FAMILY MATTERS
It was a pleasant smiling-faced place this English home of the three little maids. Phyl and Dolly would like to have heard it was old enough to call it a “venerable pile” or an “ancient structure,” but, as a matter of fact, its age was not more than sixty or seventy years. It was of brown, rough stone, mellowed to a harmonious tint by the suns and rains of that more than half-century. It was square in shape with a big, welcoming porch at the front, round which in summer roses clustered, but that winter saw fringed with icicles. All the rooms were big and bright, with old-fashioned furniture, the wood of which was chiefly oak, and the draperies and cushions of flowered chintz in delicate colours. From the gate a broad drive, ill-kept at this time, swept to the porch, then curved and ran behind the house to the empty stables. A shrubbery filled the broad space between the left side of the house and the thick, tall hedge that cut it off from the road; the right side looked [36] ]over a vegetable garden, chiefly filled with gooseberries, and saw at the limit of the grounds that side a high red brick wall where a cherished apricot tree grew vine-wise.