“I thought I heard Tina in here,” said a taller sister, entering by another door. Annette was perhaps not so pretty as the other two, but she had a large, blonde gentleness, very reposefully attractive. She had been engaged for four years to a charming fellow, whose only lack was that of money, consequent on a dependent mother and sisters. The lovers had preserved the spirit of romance by varying the manifestations of it—for the last twelvemonth spending their time with note-book and pencil, raptly ciphering out the future possibilities of a livelihood for two on the narrowest known limit. Although Annette and Joseph had seen each other nearly every evening during this probation her soft eyes suffused and her soft cheeks rosed as virginally on the thousandth time he appeared as on the first. She held up a garment now as she spoke. “I want to give this new waist to Tina to mend. Just see where she’s torn it! I found it under her desk.” “Now, Annette, if you’ve been putting her room to rights again——!” Elinor held up her hands in despair. “I couldn’t stand seeing it the way it was,” said Annette apologetically. “Yes, of course, that’s the way you spoil her. I’m sure you and I were brought up very differently. Here, give me a needle and thread, she’ll never mend that waist. Mother, now you’ve let Tina think she’s going to the dance, that settles it; you can’t go back on it now: but I think she ought to understand that _this_ is absolutely the last time.” “She seemed to take it so to heart,” said the mother weakly. She tried to rally herself intelligently. “Of course I don’t mind her accepting invitations occasionally; she’s nearly eighteen; but the girls who are not out have more going on than the girls that are. And that young Fanshawe—he seems a stupid sort of a boy, to me; but he does such reckless things I do _not_ like to have Tina with him.” “Oh, mother, he’s all right, really, he’s only young.” Annette’s tone was gently protesting. “He’s so much richer than the others that he can do more things—that’s all; she’ll soon get tired of him. All the boys in that set are devoted to Tina. When a girl is as pretty as she is——” The three looked at each other in the pause that followed, but each saw only the image of the beloved youngest.