From that day forward I saw them frequently, generally, as on the first occasion, alone, the eldest in charge of the younger ones, sometimes accompanied by a tall lady, also in deep mourning, whom they addressed as ‘auntie;’ sometimes with a sober, matronly looking nurse, who carried in her arms a bundle of white drapery, enveloping what I opined to be a baby of tender weeks. This baby was the favourite toy of the three little sisters. Nothing else possessed the slightest attraction for them when their tiny brother was present; and it was a pretty study to watch the pride and delight of the two elder girls, when their nurse allowed each in turn to carry the white-robed atom a few steps away from her side and back again. Nor was little Ethel, the youngest of the trio, debarred from the privilege of playing nurse sometimes. Too weak and frail to be safely trusted to carry the precious burden, it was her chief delight to sit, still as a mouse, on the corner of one of the garden-seats, crooning and talking baby-talk to the unconscious morsel on her lap, while the nurse and elder girls kept guard at a few yards’ distance, their absence being clearly a highly valued condition of this innocent ‘confidence-trick.’ Morning after morning, throughout the first week of their residence in our square, was the same routine carried out; the younger ones sometimes indulging in a run with their hoops, from Gertie’s side; sometimes amusing themselves with dolls or skipping-ropes; or again listening while their aunt or Gertrude read aloud to them. But on Saturday morning they did not appear as usual, and I found myself quite missing their company, and puzzling myself with vague speculations to account for their absence. Even in this short time my heart had gone out towards the little motherless girls, and I had begun unconsciously to weave fanciful theories of their past and present life, to account for the sweet seriousness and precocious womanly airs of the eldest girl, and the influence of love—for her manner was untinged by any assumption of elder-sisterly prerogative—which she clearly possessed and exercised over the younger ones. Rightly or wrongly, I never knew, but I pictured them the children of parents separated by a long interval of years in age, but united by strong bonds of confidence and affection. Gertrude’s sedate air suggested that she had been rather the companion than the plaything of her mother; and that the mother’s influence had been tender, without caprice, was apparent from her child’s gentle gravity, and from the unquestioning attention paid to her lightest hint or remonstrance by the younger sisters. The words, ‘Mother would not have wished it,’ or, ‘Father would not like to see it,’ from her lips were sufficient in a moment to quell Edith’s occasional fractiousness, or to dry Ethel’s ready tears; while the confidence existing between all three was enough to show that no undue favouritism had ever wakened jealousy of one another.