"What do you think of them? Isn't she lovely? and isn't Peggy a dear?"
"Yes," said Bell. "I think you have just hit it, Toots. Peggy is a dear; just a hearty, jolly dear; but Margaret is lovely. Do you see a little hint of Hilda? I can't tell where it is; not in the features, certainly, nor in the coloring. I think it is in the brow and eyes; a kind of noble look; I don't know how else to put it. You wouldn't say anything false or base to this girl, any more than you would to Hilda; you wouldn't dare. My lamb! I speak as if falseness and baseness were the usual note of your conversation."
"I thought you were a trifle severe," said Gertrude, smiling. "Well, anyhow, it is a joy to have them here, and dear Colonel Ferrers, too. What shall we do this evening? Here come the boys for a council."
The twins, Gerald and Phil, came running down the wharf, followed by Jack Ferrers. The latter, whom some of my readers may have known as an awkward, "leggy" boy, was now a man. Very tall, towering three or four inches above the six-foot Merryweathers, he still kept his boyish slenderness and spring, though the awkward angles were somehow softened away. He no longer stooped and shambled, but held his head up and his shoulders back; and if he did still prance, as his uncle declared, like the Mighty Ones of Scripture, it was not an ungraceful prancing. Briefly, Jack Ferrers was a fine-looking fellow.
"Council of War?" asked Gerald; "or do we intrude?"
"Sit down!" said Bell. "We were just beginning to plan the evening. What are your ideas, if any?"
The boys—for they were still the boys, even if they had passed one and twenty—stretched themselves along the wharf in picturesque attitudes.
"I would sing!" announced Gerald. "Prose will not express my feelings at this juncture.
"My fertile brain is simmering,
My fancy's fire is glimmering;
I'd fain betake
Me to the lake,
When bright the moonlight's shimmering.
"Your turn, Ferguson. Go on; the song upraise!"