unceremoniously----"

"It would have been ruder to neglect us, little Puritan! I want to
see Connie Berkley's boy. I'm glad he came."

Celia Craig, once Celia Marye Ormond Paige, stood watching her
taller sister-in-law twisting up her hair and winding the thick
braid around the crown of her head _a la coronal_. Little wonder
that these two were so often mistaken for own sisters--the matron
not quite as tall as the young widow, but as slender, and fair, and
cast in the same girlish mould.

Both inherited from their Ormond ancestry slightly arched and
dainty noses and brows, delicate hands and feet, and the same
splendid dull-gold hair--features apparently characteristic of the
line, all the women of which had been toasts of a hundred years
ago, before Harry Lee hunted men and the Shadow of the Swamp Fox
flitted through the cypress to a great king's undoing.

Ailsa laid a pink bow against her hair and glanced at her
sister-in-law for approval.

"I declare. Honey-bud, you are all rose colour to-day," said Celia
Craig, smiling; and, on impulse, unpinned the pink-and-white cameo
from her own throat and fastened it to Ailsa's breast.

"I reckon I'll slip on a gay gown myse'f," she added mischievously.
"I certainly am becoming ve'y tired of leaving the field to my
sister-in-law, and my schoolgirl daughters."