brown soft hair, rosy cheeks, bright merry eyes, plump form, and
quick loving audacity. Above her sat a girl of fifteen, with the
family features in their prettiest development--the chiseled straight
profile, the clear white roseately tinted skin, the large well-opened
azure eyes, the profuse glossy hair, the long, slender, graceful
limbs, and that pretty head leant against the knees of her own very
counterpart; for these were Wilmet and Alda, the twin girls who had
succeeded Felix, and whose beauty had been the marvel of Vale Leston,
their shabby dress the scorn of the day school at Bexley. And forming
the apex of the pyramid, perched astride on the very shoulders of
much-enduring Wilmet, was three years old Angela--Baby Bernard being
quiescent in a cradle near mamma. N.B.--Mrs. Underwood, though her
girls had such masculine names, had made so strong a protest against
their being called by boyish abbreviations, that only in one case had
nature been too strong for her, and Robina had turned into Bobbie.
Wilmet's second name being Ursula, she was apt to be known as 'W.'W.

'Make haste, Felix, you intolerable boy! don't be so slow!'
cried Alda.

'Is there a letter?' inquired Wilmet.

Yes, more's the pity!' said Felix. 'Now I shall have to answer it.'

'I'll do that, if you'll give me what's inside,' said Edgar.

'Is it there?' exclaimed Cherry, in a tone of doubt, that sent an
electric thrill of dismay through the audience; Lance nearly toppling
over, to the horror of the adjacent sisters, and the grave rebuke of
Clement.