“Mother, it was a mistake mentioning Dick: the name is sacred. Nan, if it will please you we will declare that he is beautiful as a young Apollo.”
“Don’t be a goose, Phil!” from her sister. But Nan was smiling.
“As for Harry, he is a perfect hero. I expect great things from the great man. To my imagination he is a perfect Hercules,—Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcmene. I wonder if Harry could tell us the name of Hercules’s mother?”
“Of course not, and no one else either,” retorted Dulce.
But Phillis did not heed this.
“To me he shall be the young Alcides. He has promised to fight the Nemæan lion, in the shape of Richard Mayne the elder. By and by we shall have him striking off the heads of the Lernean Hydra. You look mystified, Nan. And I perceive Mattie has a perplexed countenance. I am afraid you are deficient in heathen mythology; but I will spare your ignorance. You will see, though, I am right––”
“But, Phillis––” broke in Dulce, eagerly. But Phillis waved her hand majestically at the interruption:
“Mother, to be serious, I consider Harry in the light of a providential interposition. You are always mourning that there is not a man belonging to us. Well, now we have got one, large as life, and larger, and a very good fellow, as you say; and we are no longer ‘forlorn females.’”
“And indeed, Phillis, I am most thankful for that, my dear; for if Harry be only as good as a brother to you––”
“He means to be more,” returned Phillis, with a sage nod of her head. “He talks in the coolest way, as though he had adopted the whole family and meant to put a spoke into the domestic wheel. ‘I must put a stop to this,’ or, ‘That must be altered,’ has been a frequent remark of his. Mother, if he is dreadfully rich, as he says, does he mean to make us rich too?” 297