“But the children, though they ran wild, were not without ambition. On summer evenings, when the family took tea on the back porch and it was too warm for the children to run about much, they used to sit and tell their ambitions.
“‘I’m going to be an actress when I get big,’ declared Lilith. ‘I’m going to have a splendid career on the stage, and I shall earn heaps of money. And I shall have magnificent clothes, and every one will look at me and say, “Isn’t she in stunning form to-night!”’
“And Le Page and Delilah were so overcome by the vision thus presented of their sister that they could but stare, awed and silent.
“And Delilah wondered how it must seem to be so very clever.
“But Le Page, who was eleven years old himself, soon rallied.
“‘Well, then,’ said he, ‘when I get big I’m going to be a pirate. I’ll lay over all the pirates that ever were, a-firing and a-pillaging—and I’ll wear magnificent clothes, and everyone will look at me and say, “Isn’t he in stunning form to-night!”’
“Delilah thought this latter sounded strangely like Lilith—but perhaps in some subtle way a pirate was like an actress, and so must need be described in the same terms.
“‘And Delilah,’ said her father, ‘what shall you be—what kind of clothes are you going to wear?’