A sound of coming footsteps, of gay, young voices, an opening of doors, letting in fresh breezes from without, and with them two bright, blooming, merry little girls and a lad between them and Mildred in age, in whose great black eyes lurked a world of fun and mischief.
"Softly, softly, children!" the mother said looking up with a smile as they came dancing and prancing in. "Rupert, are you not old enough to begin to act in a rather more gentlemanly way?"
"Yes, mother, I beg your pardon. Yours too, Aunt Wealthy, I didn't know till this moment that you were here."
"Mother, he's always teasing," complained the younger of the girls, "he says we'll have to live in wigwams like the Indians and perhaps grow to be as black and ugly as they are."
"But they're not black, Ada," exclaimed the other, "my g'ography calls 'em red men."
"Well, that's 'most worse, I'd as lief be black as red."
"If you're careful to wear your sunbonnets when you go out, you won't grow to be either," remarked Mildred, while Mrs. Keith said with a look of mild reproof,
"Rupert, my son, was it quite truthful to tell your sisters such things?"
"I was only making fun," he answered, trying to turn it off with a laugh, but blushing as he spoke.