“After saving Peter’s life I think they are at liberty to do anything they like,” said Katherine, with the asperity which intercourse with her aunt never failed to bring to the surface. “And if they were not the Roger Madisons, what would you have to say, Aunt Sophia?” Victoria, dreading an argument, abruptly turned the conversation by introducing the matter of the typewriter. It was, perhaps, a case of leaping from the frying-pan into the fire, but she felt that anything would be preferable to a lengthy discussion of the Madisons between her aunt and Katherine, who never, under any circumstances, were known to agree, and who each possessed to the last degree the power of irritating the other. Sophy, meanwhile, had been shut out completely both from Peter’s room and from that of her aunt. She had been told by her sisters to go to bed, but as they had failed to enforce the command, she had not yet obeyed it. Instead, she wandered disconsolately over the house, even seeking Blanch in the kitchen, although she was not a favorite with the child. Sophy was discriminating, and her prejudices were strong. She found Blanch engaged in a spirited discussion with the lately arrived maid from Beacon Street, and her presence was so completely ignored by them both, that she left the kitchen and returned to the main part of the house. Glancing from the window at the side of the front door, she saw Mr. Madison approaching, and she opened the door and gladly welcomed him. “Won’t you come and talk to me?” she said in a forlorn little voice. “I’m all alone. I can’t go to Peter’s room, and I can’t find Sirius, and Aunt Sophia doesn’t want me. Don’t you think if somebody was named for you, you’d like to have ’em in your room when you were unpacking?” “Indeed I should!” said Madison, seating himself in the parlor, while Sophy took another chair and prepared to entertain him, after the manner, as she thought, of her elder sisters when they had visitors. “And Aunt Sophia is unpacking,” she continued, “and unpacking is such a very interesting thing to watch. I think she is asking questions, too. Aunt Sophia asks a great many questions. When I do, the girls say I’m curious, but they can’t say that to Aunt Sophia.” “No, scarcely!” said Mr. Madison, who was greatly amused with his small hostess, but preserved a perfectly straight face. “She thinks we ought to live with her, but we don’t want to. We would rather work for our living, and so we teach school and give music lessons and sell mushrooms and violets, and once Vic went to Boston and sold some gold things and some—oh, but I forgot! The girls told me not to tell anybody that.” “No,” said Roger, gravely; “you had better not.” “Perhaps when we get to know you very well, we’ll tell you all about what the man said to Vic, the young man—”