“What’s the matter with you, Dot Kenway?” she demanded, as the smallest Corner House girl seemed still to be fussing with her thread and needle, her face puckered up and a frown on her small brow. “You’re the slowest thing!”
“I—I believe this needle’s asleep, Tess,” wailed Dot, finally.
“Asleep?” gasped the other. “What nonsense!”
“Yes, ’tis—so now!” ejaculated Dot. “Anyway, I can’t get its eye open.”
A low laugh sounded behind them, and a tall girl swooped down on the floor and put her arms around the smallest Corner House girl.
“Let sister do it for you, honeybee,” said the newcomer. “Won’t the eye open? Well! we’ll make it—there!”
This was Ruth, the oldest of the four Kenway sisters. She was dark, not particularly pretty, but, as Tess often said, awfully good! Ruth had a smile that illuminated her rather plain face and won her friends everywhere. Moreover, she had a beautiful, low, sweet voice—a “mother voice,” Agnes said.
Ruth had been mothering her three younger sisters for a long time now—ever since their real mother had died, leaving Agnes and Tess and Dot, to say nothing of Aunt Sarah Maltby, in the older girl’s care. And faithfully had Ruth Kenway performed her duty.
Agnes was the pretty sister (although Tess, with all her gravity, promised to equal the fly-away in time) for she had beautiful light hair, a rosy complexion, and large blue eyes, of an expression most innocent but in the depths of which lurked the Imps of Mischief.
Little Dot was dark, like Ruth; only she was most lovely—her hair wavy and silky, her little limbs round, her eyes bright, and her lips as red as an ox-heart cherry!