"Don't they count as ancestors?" she asked.
"Oh yes," replied Marjory, laughing, "but they are all in the drawing-room. I've often thought it would be much nicer to hang them up in pairs, but Uncle George won't hear of it. He says they always have been kept separate, and he doesn't like to have anything altered. Come and see the ladies."
To the drawing-room accordingly they went. It was a large room, and contained many treasures in the way of beautiful and valuable old furniture and china. As a rule it was kept shrouded in dust-sheets, but to-day Lisbeth had uncovered everything in preparation for the visitor. There was a faint, delicious scent of potpourri about the room, the recipe of which had been handed down from one generation of Hunter ladies to the next, and was a speciality of the house. On the walls hung the portraits of these same ladies, smiling serenely down upon the room they had known so well. On the rare occasions when Marjory spent any time in this room, she used to study the faces of these dames, and try to trace some likeness to herself amongst them; but not one of them had the curly hair and dark eyes that were her portion, and the child sometimes felt sad to think that she was so unlike all the rest of her family.
Blanche was delighted, and studied all the portraits to the last one—that of Marjory's grandmother.
"But isn't there one of your mother?" she asked.
Marjory blushed. "Yes, there is one," she replied, "but it's in another room."
Somehow she felt ashamed of that shut-up, silent room with its hidden treasures that she had never seen.
"But," she continued, "I've got a picture of her when she was a girl, inside this locket." And she unfastened a small, old-fashioned trinket which she wore on a fine gold chain round her neck.
"Oh, how pretty!" cried Blanche; "but not a bit like you, is she?" And then, somewhat confused lest Marjory should misunderstand her, she continued, "I don't mean that you're not pretty, because you are; only it's so funny that you are so dark and your mother was so fair."
"I often and often wish I were fair," said Marjory wistfully. "I should love to be."