different,' added Aunt Ada.

'Yes,' said Gillian. 'We have never been in the way of caring for
any outsider. I don't reckon Bessie Merrifield so---nor Fly Devereux,
nor Dolores, because they are cousins.'

'Cousins may be everything or nothing,' asserted Miss Mohun. 'You
have been about so much that you have hardly had time to form
intimacies. But had you no friends in the officers' families?'

'People always retired before their children grew up to be
companionable, said Gillian. 'There was nobody except the Whites.
And that wasn't exactly friendship.'

'Who were they?' said Aunt Jane, who always liked to know all about
everybody.

'He rose from the ranks,' said Gillian. 'He was very much respected,
and nobody would have known that he was not a gentleman to begin
with. But his wife was half a Greek. Papa said she had been very
pretty; but, oh! she had grown so awfully fat. We used to call her
the Queen of the White Ants. Then Kally---her name was really
Kalliope---was very nice, and mamma got them to send her to a good
day-school at Dublin, and Alethea and Phyllis used to have her in to
try to make a lady of her. There used to be a great deal of fun
about their Muse, I remember; Claude thought her very pretty, and
always stood up for her, and Alethea was very fond of her. But soon
after we went to Belfast, Mr. White was made to retire with the rank
of captain. I think papa tried to get something for him to do; but I
am not sure whether he succeeded, and I don't know any more about