Papa and Mamma Helmont had their cronies too, though scarcely as many as their children. So one way and another The Fells was rarely free from visitors. "A family party" was almost unknown, and not desired. The young Helmonts were all more or less spoilt; nature and circumstances had done their part as well as the father and mother. The Squire was very rich and very liberal; he liked to see people about him happy, and saw no reason why he should not do so. Trouble of any kind had come near the family but slightly; perhaps their organisations were not of the most sensitive order to begin with, still they passed muster as good-natured and kindly, and to a certain extent this was true. If the other side of the medal revealed a touch of coarseness, of inconsiderateness for others, verging upon undisguised selfishness, it was scarcely perhaps surprising; prosperity, in some directions, is by no means the unalloyed blessing one might esteem it, to judge by the universal envy it arouses. But the Helmonts are not, after all, the most prominent characters in my story. They serve as a background merely--a substantial and not unpleasing one on the whole, with their handsome persons, their genial ways; best of all, perhaps, their rough-and-ready honesty. I have said that they were hospitable--to a fault. Curiously enough, however, the first words we hear from them would almost seem to contradict this. It is Alicia, the eldest daughter at home, the second in actual order of seniority in the family, who is speaking. "You needn't exaggerate so about it, Florence. It is tiresome and provoking, just when we had got our set so nicely arranged. Still, after all, a girl of that age--almost a child." "That's the very point," said Florence, impatiently. "I wonder you don't see it, Alicia. If she were older and had seen anything--an ordinary sort of a girl--one might leave her to look after herself. But when mother puts it to us in that way, appealing to us to be kind to the child for her sake, for old association's sake, what can one say? I call it ridiculous, I do really. I didn't think mother was so sentimental." "It is a great bore, certainly," Miss Helmont agreed. "But I wouldn't worry myself about it, Florence. Take it easy as I do." Florence gave a little laugh. It was not an ill-natured laugh, though there was a touch of contempt in it. For Alicia's "taking things easily" was proverbial in the family, and was probably as much to be traced to a certain amount of constitutional indolence, as to the imperturbable good temper which it must be allowed she possessed. Florence's laugh in no way disconcerted her. "Or," she continued, with for once a little sparkle of mischief in her rather sleepy brown eyes, "give her over to Trixie's tender mercies. Trixie and Mabella Forsyth can take her in hand." Florence turned upon her sister almost fiercely. She was the least placid, though decidedly the cleverest of the Helmont daughters.