“Yes, be an authoress—scribbler, and have a mania for dirt, disorder and ink-stands. Pshaw! look at your fingers,” said Lisa, pointing to them.
“I’ll wash them—I’ll wash them!” cried Kate, “without mumbling over ugly spots, like Lady Macbeth. My little nail brush will do more than all her perfumes.”
And running to her room she went to work to verify her word.
Soon they all met at breakfast, and Lisa presided at the cheerful board, like the mother bird, while the rest chatted around her. She was not the eldest but the most thoughtful, and to her all came for assistance and advice. Her long fingers could fashion dresses, collars, ruffs, bonnets, if necessary, and her ingenuity trampled upon impossibilities with every new pattern that appeared. So, while Blanche busied her fine head with metaphysics, piano, harp and guitar, the three others learned from both to be agreeable and useful members of society.
Society they cared little for. Blanche had been a belle par excellence until she became tired and disgusted with admiration and lovers, whose name was legion. Lisa never liked one or the other. She contemplated balls and beaux at a distance, and called them absurdities, though nothing pleased her like dressing her sister, and seeing her courted and flattered, night after night and day after day.
As for Kate, she had a touch of the romantic; she liked to sing and dance at home, loved to laugh and be merry with those of her own age, but thought that home the fairest and best place in the world. So, after a winter of dissipation, she foreswore the beaumonde, and vowed its votaries a heartless set.
Rose’s large, soft, dark eyes never wandered farther than the fences that bounded her father’s enclosures. With something of eccentricity she loved to steal off and enjoy a lonely hour at the close of each day, and her piety became a proverb. Nothing could move her out of the reach of the household gods, and at eighteen she was a child at heart and in manner.
Minnie was the imp! Minnie loved the world, and longed for a debut, as the minor “pants for twenty-one.” For her all hands must work—for her all hands must stop; and thus they were all at home, a bird’s nest of different nestlings, ready to take wing and fly when the parent bird has ceased to control their movements.
“Come, daughters, sing and play,” said Mr. de la Croix, as he sat in his arm chair, at the wide hall door. “What are you all about, eternally sewing and reading? Give the old house some life, will you?”
Blanche rose and seated herself at the piano, running her little white hands skillfully over the keys. Kate pulled the harp out of the corner, and soon a loud, clear voice swelled melodiously through the air. Then came a chorus of fresh young notes, and the soft strains of the piano, with the harp’s wild, sweeping music, mingled together, while the father sat listening to his crown of jewels, full of rapture and pride.