“Yes, it improves a man to get married,” said Halleck, with a long, stifled sigh. “It's improved the most selfish hound I ever knew.” XXI. The two elder Miss Hallecks were so much older than Olive, the youngest, that they seemed to be of a sort of intermediary generation between her and her parents, though Olive herself was well out of her teens, and was the senior of her brother Ben by two or three years. The elder sisters were always together, and they adhered in common to the religion of their father and mother. The defection of their brother was passive, but Olive, having conscientiously adopted an alien faith, was not a person to let others imagine her ashamed of it, and her Unitarianism was outspoken. In her turn she formed a kind of party with Ben inside the family, and would have led him on in her own excesses of independence if his somewhat melancholy indifferentism had consented. It was only in his absence that she had been with her sisters during their summer sojourn in the White Mountains; when they returned home, she vigorously went her way, and left them to go theirs. She was fond of them in her defiant fashion; but in such a matter as calling on Mrs. Hubbard she chose not to be mixed up with her family, or in any way to countenance her family's prepossessions. Her sisters paid their visit together, and she waited for Clara Kingsbury to come up from the seaside. Then she went with her to call upon Marcia, sitting observant and non-committal while Clara swooped through the little house, up stairs and down, clamoring over its prettiness, and admiring the art with which so few dollars could be made to go so far. “Think of finding such a bower on Clover Street!” She made Marcia give her the cost of everything; and her heart swelled with pride in her sex--when she heard that Marcia had put down all the carpets herself. “I wanted to make them up,” Marcia explained, “but Mr. Hubbard wouldn't let me,--it cost so little at the store.” “Wouldn't let you!” cried Miss Kingsbury. “I should hope as much, indeed! Why, my child, you're a Roman matron!” She came away in agony lest Marcia might think she meant her nose. She drove early the next morning to tell Olive Halleck that she had spent a sleepless night from this cause, and to ask her what she _should_ do. “Do you think she will be hurt, Olive? Tell me what led up to it. How did I behave before that? The context is everything in such cases.” “Oh, you went about praising everything, and screaming and shouting, and my-dearing and my-childing her, and patronizing--” “There, there! say no more! That's sufficient! I see,--I see it all! I've done the very most offensive thing I could, when I meant to be the most appreciative.” “These country people don't like to be appreciated down to the quick, in that way,” said Olive. “I should think Mrs. Hubbard was rather a proud person.” “I know! I know!” moaned Miss Kingsbury. “It was ghastly.” “_I_ don't suppose she's ashamed of her nose--”