The five Misses Middleton crowded about the window, if ladies so punctilious, so precise, so ceremonious as were the five Misses Middleton could be said to crowd.
"See her now, running as fast as any one of those boys," said Miss Middleton the eldest.
"And without her hat!" said Miss Joanna, settling her spectacles.
"And her hair streaming!" added Miss Dorcas, as she clutched her knitting-needles.
"And—and—I hardly like to say it, but, my dear sisters, do you notice how she—well, how she thrusts out her feet?" murmured Miss Melissa, with a look of embarrassment.
"But how happy she looks!" said Miss Thomasine, though in so low a voice that it almost seemed as if she must be hoping that her sisters would not hear her. But they did, and immediately they turned upon her in a body.
"Thomasine, I am astonished! In the first place, you cannot possibly tell whether she looks happy or not, and in the second place—" But no one ever heard what came in the second place, for Miss Middleton's sentence was broken short by an exclamation of added horror from her four sisters.
"Oh, she has fallen down!"
A profound silence while they all looked.
"There, she is up again! Oh, my dear sisters, she is going to start again! What shall we do with her, and why did this come upon us?"