I know a family in which are three small girls, between whom there is
very little difference in age. These children all enjoy coming to take
tea with me. For convenience, I should naturally invite them all on the
same afternoon.

Both their father and mother, however, have requested me not to do this.
"Do ask them one at a time on different days," they said.

"Of course I will," I assented. "But--why?" I could not forbear
questioning.

"When I was a child," the mother of the three little girls explained, "I
was never allowed to accept an invitation unless my younger sister was
invited, too. I was fond of my sister; but I used to long to go
somewhere sometime by myself! My husband had the same experience--his
brother always had to be invited when he was, or he couldn't go. Our
children shall not be so circumscribed!"

There is not much danger for them, certainly, in that direction. Yet I
rather think they would enjoy doing more things together. One day, not a
great while ago, I chanced to meet all three of them near a tearoom. I
asked them--perforce all of them--to go in with me and partake of ice
cream. As we sat around the table, the oldest of the three glanced at
the other two with a friendly smile. "It is nice--all of us having ice
cream with you at the same time," she remarked, and her younger sisters
enthusiastically agreed.

To be sure, they are nearer the same age and they are more alike in
their tastes than their mother and her sister, or their father and his