Edie lived at Camberwell in a small house covered with Virginia creeper not yet in leaf, still a brownish red mat which depressed Jenny as she rattled the flap of the letterbox and called her sister's name through the aperture. Presently Edie opened the door. "Why, if it isn't Jenny. Well I never, you are a stranger." Edie was shorter than Jenny and more round. Yet for all her plumpness she looked worn, and her slanting eyes, never so bright as Jenny's, were ringed with purple cavities. "How are you, Edie, all this long time?" "Oh, I'm grand; how's yourself?" "I'm all right." The two sisters were sitting in the parlor, which smelt unused, although it was covered with lengths of material and brown-paper patterns. By the window was a dressmaker's bust, mournfully buxom. Jenny compared it with the lay figure in the studio and smiled, thinking how funny they would look together. "I wish Bert was in," said Edie. "But he's away on business." Just then a sound of tears was audible, and the mother had to run out of the room. "The children gets a nuisance," she said, as she came back comforting Eunice, a little girl of two. "Isn't she growing up a little love?" said Jenny. "Oh, I do think she's pretty. What glorious eyes she's got." "They're like her father's, people say; but young Norman, he's the walking life-like of you, Jenny." "Where is the rogue?" his aunt inquired. "Where's Norman, Eunice?" "Out in the garding, digging gwaves," said Eunice in a fat voice. Jenny had a sudden longing to have a child of her own and live in a little house quite close to London. "Why, I don't believe you've ever seen Baby," said Edie. "Of course I have, but not for some months." They went upstairs to look at Baby, who was lying asleep in his cot. Jenny felt oppressed by the smallness of the bedroom and the many enlargements of Bert's likeness in youth which dwarfed every other ornament. They recurred everywhere in extravagantly gilt frames; and the original photograph was on the chest of drawers opposite one of Edie wearing a fringe and balloon sleeves. "There's another coming in five months," said Edie. "Go on. How many more?" "I don't know--plenty yet, I expect." The magic of home that for a few moments had enchanted the little house was dispelled. Moreover, at tea Norman smeared his face with jam, and snatched, and kicked his mother because she slapped his wrist. "Why do you let him behave so bad?" asked Jenny, unconscious that she was already emulating her own hated Aunt Mabel. "I don't, only he's such a handful; and his dad spoils him. Besides, anything for a bit of peace and quiet. Bert never thinks what a worry children is, and as if I hadn't got enough to look after, he brought back a dog last week." "Why don't you tell him off?" "Oh, it's easier to humor him. You'll find that out quick enough when you're married yourself." "Me married? I don't think."