"Dear fellow! so he is. I am seven years older than he, but we have always been intimate. Brothers and sisters are not always intimate, you know,—or perhaps you don't know, for all of yours are."
"Yes, indeed," said Katy, with a happy smile. "There is nobody like Clover and Elsie, except perhaps Johnnie and Dorry and Phil," she added with a laugh.
The remove to the Pension Suisse was made early the next morning. Mrs. Page and Lilly did not appear to welcome them. Katy rather rejoiced in their absence, for she wanted the chance to get into order without interruptions.
There was something comfortable in the thought that they were to stay a whole month in these new quarters; for so long a time, it seemed worth while to make them pretty and homelike. So, while Mrs. Ashe unpacked her own belongings and Amy's, Katy, who had a natural turn for arranging rooms, took possession of the little parlor, pulled the furniture into new positions, laid out portfolios and work-cases and their few books, pinned various photographs which they had bought in Oxford and London on the walls, and tied back the curtains to admit the sunshine. Then she paid a visit to the little garden, and came back with a long branch of laurestinus, which she trained across the mantelpiece, and a bunch of wallflowers for their one little vase. The maid, by her orders, laid a fire of wood and pine cones ready for lighting; and when all was done she called Mrs. Ashe to pronounce upon the effect.
"It is lovely," she said, sinking into a great velvet arm-chair which Katy had drawn close to the seaward window. "I haven't seen anything so pleasant since we left home. You are a witch, Katy, and the comfort of my life. I am so glad I brought you! Now, pray go and unpack your own things, and make yourself look nice for the second breakfast. We have been a shabby set enough since we arrived. I saw those cousins of yours looking askance at our old travelling-dresses yesterday. Let us try to make a more respectable impression to-day."
So they went down to breakfast, Mrs. Ashe in one of her new Paris gowns, Katy in a pretty dress of olive serge, and Amy all smiles and ruffled pinafore, walking hand in hand with her uncle Ned, who had just arrived and whose great ally she was; and Mrs. Page and Lilly, who were already seated at table, had much ado to conceal their somewhat unflattering surprise at the conjunction. For one moment Lilly's eyes opened into a wide stare of incredulous astonishment; then she remembered herself, nodded as pleasantly as she could to Mrs. Ashe and Katy, and favored Lieutenant Worthington with a pretty blushing smile as he went by, while she murmured,—
"Mamma, do you see that? What does it mean?"
"Why, Ned, do you know those people?" asked Mrs. Ashe at the same moment.
"Do you know them!"
"Yes; we met yesterday. They are connections of my friend Miss Carr."