"Dorcas forgot that they were all boys, I have no doubt," said Miss Thomasine, in her gentle voice. "We knew Ellen Hoyt when she was young, Joanna, you remember. As gentle a girl as ever lived."
"Yes," rejoined Miss Dorcas, her courage returning when she found that she had a champion. "It was natural that we should suppose her children should be quiet and gentle too. I am sure I never dreamed that they were all boys."
"It has been most disastrous," continued Miss Joanna.
"But there is one resource left," suggested Miss Melissa. "You know, sisters, what Theodore's wife said—she spoke of it herself—I am sure we should never have thought of it."
Miss Melissa had a vague, hurried manner which never failed to irritate her sister Joanna, who was brisk, and in other conditions of life would have been businesslike.
"If you mean the boarding-school plan, Melissa;" she said, "why do you not say so in plain words? For my part, I think it would be the best place for the child."
"Not if we can help it," pleaded Miss Thomasine. "She is our niece, you know, and I do not like the idea of closing our doors against her."
"Thomasine, you are so extreme in your language," said Miss Middleton. "I am sure no one dreams of closing our doors against Theodora; but if we cannot control her, I quite agree with Joanna that it would be the best place for her."
It was just at this point in the conversation that a startling clamor was heard from downstairs. The ladies were sitting in the "spare chamber" on the second floor, as they were apt to do of a morning. The noise drew nearer. It was unmistakably a cry of mingled wrath and pain, and it was accompanied by the sound of hurrying feet. Children's shoes were scuffling up the old oak staircase. It sounded as if at least a dozen pairs of feet were hurrying toward the live Misses Middleton.
The door opened with a burst, and into the room came Theodora. Blood was streaming from her nose, tears from her eyes, and in her arms she carried—was it? could it be? The five Misses Middleton looked, and looked again. Their niece was bringing into their presence a dead kitten! She was accompanied by two of her friends the Hoyt boys, but they, dismayed by the sight of a circle of five ladies, retreated into the hall, and peered through the crack of the half-open door. Still another was at the foot of the stairs, not daring to come up higher.