"Well, to you, perhaps not. It may be rather mortifying. My sweet Sophia, you are the eldest of us, but your younger sister has stolen a march on you. You have played your cards ill, Miss Courtenay. Fanny is going to be the first of us married, unless I contrive to run away with somebody in the interval. I don't know whom--there's the difficulty." "Well, I always thought she would be," said Sophy, quite good-humouredly. "She is the prettiest of us, is Fanny." "So much obliged for the compliment!" gleefully cried Hatty. "Cary, don't you feel delighted?" "Is Ephraim here now?" I said, for of course I never thought of anybody else. "Ephraim!" Hatty whirled round, laughing heartily. "Ephraim, my dear, will have to break his heart at leisure. Ambrose Catterall has stolen a march on _him_." "You don't mean that Fanny and Ambrose are to be married!" cried Sophy, with wide-open eyes. "I do, Madam; and my Aunt Kezia is as mad as a hatter about it. She would have liked Ephraim for her nephew ever so much better than Ambrose." "Well, I do think!" exclaimed Sophy. "If Ephraim did really care for Fanny, she has used him shamefully." "So _I_ think!" said Hatty. "I mean to present him on his next birthday with a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs, embroidered in the corner with an urn and a willow-tree." "An urn, you ridiculous child!" returned Sophy. "That means that somebody is dead." "Don't throw cold water on my charming conceits!" pleaded Hatty. "Now go in and face my Aunt Kezia--if you dare." We found her cutting out flannel petticoats in the parlour. My Aunt Kezia's brows were drawn together, and my Aunt Kezia's lips were thin; and I trembled. However, she took no note of us, but went on tearing up flannel, and making little piles of it upon the table end. Sophy, with heroic bravery, attacked the citadel at once. "Well, Aunt, this is pretty news!" "What is?" said my Aunt Kezia, standing up straight and stiff. "Why, this about Fanny and Ambrose Catterall." "Oh, that! I wish there were nothing worse than that in _this_ world." My Aunt Kezia spoke as if she would have preferred some other world, where things went straighter than they do in this. "Hatty said you were put out about it, Aunt." "That's all Hatty knows. I think 'tis a blunder, and Fanny will find it out, likely enough. But if that were all--Girls, 'tis nigh dinner-time. You had better take your bonnets off." "What is the matter with my Aunt Kezia?" said I to Sophy, as we went up-stairs. "Don't ask _me_!" said that young lady. Half-way up-stairs we met Charlotte. "Oh, what fun you have missed, you two!" cried she. "Why didn't you come home a little sooner? I would not have lost it for a hundred pounds." "Lost what, Charlotte?" "Lost _what_? Ask my Aunt Kezia--now just you _do_!" "My Aunt Kezia seems unapproachable," said Sophy.