out of its place--not a single Miss Willis of the whole four was
ever seen out of hers. There they always sat, in the same places,
doing precisely the same things at the same hour. The eldest Miss
Willis used to knit, the second to draw, the two others to play
duets on the piano. They seemed to have no separate existence, but
to have made up their minds just to winter through life together.
They were three long graces in drapery, with the addition, like a
school-dinner, of another long grace afterwards--the three fates
with another sister--the Siamese twins multiplied by two. The
eldest Miss Willis grew bilious--the four Miss Willises grew
bilious immediately. The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and
religious--the four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious
directly. Whatever the eldest did, the others did, and whatever
anybody else did, they all disapproved of; and thus they vegetated-
-living in Polar harmony among themselves, and, as they sometimes
went out, or saw company 'in a quiet-way' at home, occasionally
icing the neighbours. Three years passed over in this way, when an
unlooked for and extraordinary phenomenon occurred. The Miss
Willises showed symptoms of summer, the frost gradually broke up; a
complete thaw took place. Was it possible? one of the four Miss
Willises was going to be married!

Now, where on earth the husband came from, by what feelings the
poor man could have been actuated, or by what process of reasoning
the four Miss Willises succeeded in persuading themselves that it
was possible for a man to marry one of them, without marrying them
all, are questions too profound for us to resolve: certain it is,
however, that the visits of Mr. Robinson (a gentleman in a public
office, with a good salary and a little property of his own,
besides) were received--that the four Miss Willises were courted in