“Yes.”
“What was her name?”
“Lili.”
“What a pretty name! How old was she?”
“She was six.”
“O Philip!” cried Kate; “but I might have known it. Did she love you very much?”
Hope looked up, her eyes full of mild reproach at the possibility of doubting any child’s love for Philip. He had been her betrothed for more than a year, during which time she had habitually seen him wooing every child he had met as if it were a woman,—which, for Philip, was saying a great deal. Happily they had in common the one trait of perfect amiability, and she knew no more how to be jealous than he to be constant.
“Lili was easily won,” he said. “Other things being equal, people of six prefer that man who is tallest.”
“Philip is not so very tall,” said the eldest of the boys, who was listening eagerly, and growing rapidly.
“No,” said Philip, meekly. “But then the Pasteur was short, and his brother was a dwarf.”