This terrible threat did not fail of its object. Complaining that her sisters were disagreeable cats, Betsy, went as slowly from the room as she dared, trailing her shawl behind her.

“She is very sickly,” said Arabella, in an excusing tone.

“She is a precocious brat!” retorted Sophia. “One would have thought that she would have had more elegance of mind than to be thinking of such things! Oh, Bella, if only you were to be so fortunate as to make a Splendid Marriage! And if Lady Bridlington is to bring you out I am sure I do not see how you can fail to! For,” she added nobly, “you are by far the prettiest girl I have ever seen!”

“Hoo!” interpolated Harry, adding his mite to the conversation.

“Yes,” agreed Margaret, “but if she must have diamond buttons, and tiaras, and—and those things you spoke of, I don’t see how it can be done!”

A damped silence greeted her words. Sophia was the first to recover herself. “Something,” she announced resolutely, “will be contrived!”

No one answered her. Arabella and Margaret appeared to be dubiously weighing her pronouncement; and Harry, having discovered a pair of scissors, was pleasurably engaged in snipping short lengths off a skein of darning-wool. Into this pensive silence walked a young gentleman just emerging from adolescence into manhood. He was a handsome youth, fairer than his elder sister, but with something of her cast of countenance; and it was manifest, from the alarming height of his shirt collar, and the disorder of his chestnut locks, that he affected a certain modishness that bordered on dandyism. The Knaresborough tailor who enjoyed his patronage could not aspire to the height of art achieved by Weston or Stultz, but he had done his best, and had indeed been greatly assisted by the admirable proportions of his client.