Maud Addison was the dashing one with the red-brown hair and the splendidly red and white skin. Maud's father was a solidly prosperous wholesale merchant and a Presbyterian elder, as Auntie was wont to say, as if the two things were bracketed, and Mrs. Addison, her mother, capable and authoritative, was a noted housekeeper. There were four children younger than Maud.
"I must say," commented Mrs. Wistar from her window to her sister-in-law at hers, "Maud's rushing the season for October. And Indian summer hardly begun. That's the new sealskin jacket her father and mother promised her at graduation in June. I'd like it better if it did not fit in like a basque."
"If only Selina might have suitable clothes," grieved Auntie, "she would wear clothes well with her nice carriage and her pretty skin, and her color that comes and goes. She would justify pretty things. She gets her features from you, Lavinia, and her hair and her skin from Robert."
"Thank you, Ann Eliza. I must allow I was considered pretty in my day."
The dark and vivid little creature of the group, the little flitting, flashing creature at this moment embracing Selina, was Juliette Caldwell. Juliette's mother was pretty and young to have two daughters younger than Juliette and a son in arms. Her father, young, too, was given to bantering, banging on the piano and making money.
"That crimson at the throat of Juliette's coat, and the crimson feather in her hat, become her," went on Mrs. Wistar.
Auntie agreed. "And Adele Carter is pretty after her own fashion, after all, Selina always insists she is."
"If you like that colorless skin and those big reflective dark eyes," said Mrs. Wistar.
"Adele's mother and her grandmother peck at her too much," claimed Auntie.