“Only a dozen? Oh, surely there must be more than that! Just think; there are three Homes, and I expect forty or fifty living in each. I am quite sure there will be twenty. I shall provide for twenty-five, to be on the safe side.”
She bent forward to poke the fire once more, and Betty’s eyes roamed to the white overmantel, which was divided into five panels, each of which contained a vignette portrait of a girl’s head, printed in a delicate shade of brown. She had seen much the same kind of thing in furniture warehouses again and again, but in this case the pictured faces lacked the pretty prettiness which was the usual characteristic, and were unmistakably portraits of living people. She looked at her hostess with an eager question.
“Your sisters?”
“Yes; isn’t it lovely? They clubbed together and gave it to me for a wedding present. It feels a little bit as if they were here, to look up from my work and see their faces. That’s the eldest—Maud; my Maud! She and I were always together. She is married, and has a dear little girl. That’s Lilias, the next eldest—the beauty of the family.”
“Ah!” sighed Betty enviously, “she is pretty. How lovely to be like that! Is she married too?”
“No.”
“Engaged?”
“No.”
“How funny! I should have thought she would have been married the first of all. Didn’t everyone fall in love with her at first sight?”
“Yes, I think they did, but at second sight they seem to have preferred Maud and—me?”