“True, it was very telling. Yes, you are cheerful, and you are very fond of talking.”
“I am afraid I am a sad chatterbox,” returned Bessie, blushing, as though she were conscious of an implied reproof.
“Oh, but I like talking people. People who hold their tongues and listen are such bores. I do detest bores. I talk a great deal myself.”
“I think I have got into the way for Hatty’s sake. Hatty is the sickly one of our flock; she has never been strong. When she was a tiny, weeny thing she was always crying and fretful. Father tells us that she cannot help it, but he never says so to her; he laughs and calls her ‘Little Miss Much-Afraid.’ Hatty is full of fear. She cannot see a mouse, as I tell her, without looking round the corner for pussy’s claws.”
“Is Hatty your only sister, Miss Lambert?”
“Oh, no; there are three more. I am the eldest—‘Mother’s crutch,’ as they call me. We are such a family for giving each other funny names. Tom comes next. I am three-and-twenty—quite an old person, as Tom says—and he is one-and-twenty. He is at Oxford; he wants to be a barrister. Christine comes next to Tom—she is nineteen, and so pretty; and then poor Hatty—‘sour seventeen,’ as Tom called her on her last birthday; and then the two children, Ella and Katie; though Ella is nearly sixteen, and Katie fourteen, but they are only school-girls.”
“What a large family!” observed Miss Sefton, stifling a little yawn. “Now, mamma has only got me, for we don’t count Richard.”
“Not count your brother?”
“Oh, Richard is my step-brother; he was papa’s son, you know; that makes a difference. Papa died when I was quite a little girl, so you see what I mean by saying mamma has only got me.”
“But she has your brother, too,” observed Bessie, somewhat puzzled by this.