"Do you want to see my clothes?" cried Carolina. "You shall see every rag I possess, you dear children! Don’t I know how awful it must be never to know what they are wearing at Church Parade. Five trunks came yesterday that haven’t even been unpacked. They are just as they were packed by a frisky little Frenchman in Paris, and, as they were sent after me, they were detained in the custom-house, and, before I could get them out, I was hurt. While I was in bed, my brother got them out of the custom-house and took them to _his_ house, where I forgot all about them until I was preparing to come here. Then I thought of clothes! And I also thought I might find some pretty girls down here among my relatives who would like to see the Real Thing just as it comes from the hands of the Paris couturières,--so there you are!" "Oh, Carolina Lee!" shrieked Peachie, softly. "What a sweet thing you are! Just think, Flower, Paris clothes!" "And better still, Vienna clothes!" said Carolina, laughing. "You said you were hurt, Cousin Carol," said Flower, in her soft little voice. "How were you injured?" "I was thrown from my horse, Flower, dear, and my hip was broken. I was in bed for months with it." "But you were cured," said Flower. "I never heard of a broken hip that didn’t leave a limp. There must be mighty fine doctors in New York." "There are!" said Carolina, softly. Then she turned suddenly and led the way to the house, the girls eagerly following. It will be difficult and not at all to the point to try to learn the relationship of the Lees and La Granges to Carolina and to each other. Aunt Angie La Grange was Moultrie’s, Winfield’s, and Peachie’s mother. Rose Manigault was Aunt Angie’s married sister, and Élise an unmarried one. Of the Lees, there was Aunt Evelyn Lee, Carolina’s own maiden aunt. Aunt Isabel Fitzhugh, her married aunt, with her two daughters, Eppie and Marie. Uncle Gordon Fitzhugh, Aunt Isabel’s husband, and a bachelor cousin of Carolina’s, De Courcey Lee, were the ones who had come in the buggy with the two little Fitzhugh boys, Teddy and Bob. The children could not be induced to leave the parlour until they had seen their new cousin, they had heard so much of her beauty from Moultrie, so that, when Carolina entered and was introduced to her admiring relatives, none was more admiring than the children. Indeed, Bob Fitzhugh announced to his father, as they were driving home that evening, that he was going to marry Cousin Carol. He said that he had already asked her, and that she had told him that she was ten years older than he was, but that, if he still wanted her when he was twenty-one and she hadn’t married any one in the meantime, she would marry him.