“No,” said Rose, and she came over and kissed her sister, and then sat down again. Graeme looked very much pleased, and a little surprised. Rose took up her work, and said, with a laugh that veiled something,—
“I think you have changed—improved—almost as much as Fanny, though there was not so much need.”
Graeme laughed, too.
“There was more need for improvement than you know or can imagine. I am glad you see any.”
“I am anxious about one thing, however, and so is Fanny, I am sure,” said Rose, as Fanny came into the room, with her baby in her arms. “I think I see an intention on your part to become stout. I don’t object to a certain roundness, but it may be too decided.”
“Graeme too stout! How can you say such things, Rosie?” said Fanny, indignantly.
“She is not so slender as when I went away.”
“No, but she was too slender then. Arthur thinks she is growing handsomer, and so do I.”
“Well, perhaps,” said Rose, moving believe to examine Graeme critically; “still I must warn her against future possibilities as to stoutness—and other things.”
“It is not the stoutness that displeases her, Fanny,” said Graeme, laughing; “it is the middle-aged look that is settling down upon me, that she is discontented with.”