velvety and purply and goldy."

Felix and I SAW, somewhere inside of our heads, a velvet and
purple and gold pansy-woman, just as the Story Girl spoke.

"But is she NICE?" I asked. That was the main question about
grown-ups. Their looks mattered little to us.

"She is lovely. But she is twenty-nine, you know. That's pretty
old. She doesn't bother me much. Aunt Janet says that I'd have
no bringing up at all, if it wasn't for her. Aunt Olivia says
children should just be let COME up--that everything else is
settled for them long before they are born. I don't understand
that. Do you?"

No, we did not. But it was our experience that grown-ups had a
habit of saying things hard to understand.

"What is Uncle Roger like?" was our next question.

"Well, I like Uncle Roger," said the Story Girl meditatively.
"He is big and jolly. But he teases people too much. You ask
him a serious question and you get a ridiculous answer. He
hardly ever scolds or gets cross, though, and THAT is something.
He is an old bachelor."

"Doesn't he ever mean to get married?" asked Felix.

"I don't know. Aunt Olivia wishes he would, because she's tired
keeping house for him, and she wants to go to Aunt Julia in