“‘Aren’t you a silly!’ said Lilith, laughing in Spoon-billish derision. Lilith was twelve, and one knows vastly more at twelve than at nine. ‘Virtues aren’t anything. And as for Roland’s--that doesn’t mean that he left them with us, any more than that he took them with him.’ “‘Then what _does_ it mean?’ said Delilah. ‘I’ve thought so much about it.’ “‘You’ll have to think some more,’ said Lilith--‘a good deal more, I should say--of _your_ kind of thinking!’ “Delilah did not often appeal to her sister in these matters. She did not enjoy Lilith’s habit of laughing. In truth, she didn’t enjoy being laughed at at all--not the least in the world. She was like a great many other people. “And so was Lilith. “But oh, there were many things that Delilah wished to know! “The Spoon-bill family was, as I have said, well born but poorly bred. Maren Spoon-bill and Oliver W. Spoon-bill both came of very good stock, but they had been the black sheep of their families and had forgotten the traditions and customs of their race. ‘They had left no more pride,’ Maren Spoon-bill’s mother once said, ‘than a sand-hill crane--no, nor a duck.’ “‘No, nor a duck,’ echoed Maren Spoon-bill and her husband, and gloried in it. “And the children ran wild. “But the children, though they ran wild, were not without ambition. On summer evenings, when the family took tea on the back porch and it was too warm for the children to run about much, they used to sit and tell their ambitions. “‘I’m going to be an actress when _I_ get big,’ declared Lilith. ‘I’m going to have a splendid career on the stage, and I shall earn heaps of money. And I shall have magnificent clothes, and every one will look at me and say, “_Isn’t_ she in stunning form to-night!”’ “And Le Page and Delilah were so overcome by the vision thus presented of their sister that they could but stare, awed and silent. “And Delilah wondered how it must seem to be so very clever. “But Le Page, who was eleven years old himself, soon rallied. “‘Well, then,’ said he, ‘when _I_ get big I’m going to be a pirate. I’ll lay over all the pirates that ever were, a-firing and a-pillaging--and I’ll wear magnificent clothes, and everyone will look at me and say, “_Isn’t_ he in stunning form to-night!”’ “Delilah thought this latter sounded strangely like Lilith--but perhaps in some subtle way a pirate was like an actress, and so must need be described in the same terms. “‘And Delilah,’ said her father, ‘what shall you be--what kind of clothes are you going to wear?’ “Delilah had before tried the experiment of relating her ambition to the assembled family, and the result had been bad. The high laughter of Lilith and Le Page always rose on the still evening air, and even her father, who was a kind person, would smile. Delilah’s ambition was always the same, but she nearly always varied it a little at each telling--and the amusement evinced by her sister and brother varied accordingly.