"But it is hardly fair, Miss Walton; to criticise my work while you keep
your own under cover."

"I wasn't criticising, Mr. Percivale; was I, Connie?"

"I didn't hear her make a single remark, Mr. Percivale," said Connie,
taking her sister's side.

To my surprise they were talking away with the young man as if they had
known him for years, and my wife was seated at the foot of the couch,
apparently taking no exception to the suddenness of the intimacy. I am
afraid, when I think of it, that a good many springs would be missing from
the world's history if they might not flow till the papas gave their wise
consideration to everything about the course they were to take.

"I think, though," added Connie, "it is only fair that Mr. Percivale
_should_ see your work, Wynnie."

"Then I will fetch my portfolio, if Mr. Percivale will promise to remember
that I have no opinion of it. At the same time, if I could do what I wanted
to do, I think I should not be ashamed of showing my drawings even to him."

And now I was surprised to find how like grown women my daughters could
talk. To me they always spoke like the children they were; but when I
heard them now it seemed as if they had started all at once into ladies
experienced in the ways of society. There they were chatting lightly,
airily, and yet decidedly, a slight tone of badinage interwoven, with a
young man of grace and dignity, whom they had only seen once before, and
who had advanced no farther, with Connie at least, than a stately bow. They
had, however, been a whole hour together before I arrived, and their mother