"Look! your brother is stopping to speak to them." "Of course; as though he would pass the Palmers! You have no idea how fond the dear old ladies are of him. They pet him, and knit endless mittens and comforters for him; he has a drawer full, I believe. Look at them now, wagging their old heads and fluttering round him like a flock of grey pigeons; that is Miss Faith, his favorite, near him now." "Faith; what a curious name!" "Oh, they are all a cardinal virtue; they must have had devout parents. The eldest is Hope, then comes Prudence and Charity, and lastly, Faith. Faith is much the nicest and the prettiest; she is comparatively young too." "I should like to go and see them." "Then you shall, but not this afternoon; we shall only have time for the Fawcetts. Their house is full of curious odds and ends, and though they dress alike they have separate rooms, which they have furnished after their own taste. I must coax them to let you see them; it will give you an insight into their characters." "And they have none of them married," exclaimed Queenie, with a girl's involuntary pity for the monotonous existence of single blessedness. "How could they!" returned Cathy, with a puzzled elevation of her eyebrows. "They have lived in Hepshaw all their lives; they could not have possibly seen any gentleman except the Vicar, and I dare say he was married. You would not have a clergyman's daughter commit the unpardonable crime of entering into a _mésalliance_ with the inn-keeper or the chemist!" continued Cathy, drawing down her lips at the corner, and speaking in a "prunes-and-prism" voice. "That is Miss Hope; and so the poor cardinal virtues have wasted all their sweetness on the desert air." "How very sad," began Queenie; but Cathy suddenly cut her short. "Not at all," was the somewhat stormy rejoinder; "people are just as well without marrying. For my part, I think men are a mistake. I am sick to death of school-girl rubbish; half the girls at Miss Titheridge's pretended to be in love, and with such creatures too! any masculine face approaching to the ideal of a barber's block was pronounced handsome, fascinating. You know how you hated it all, Queenie." "As I hate all sham." "Faugh! the thought of all the three-volume trash I swallowed gives me moral dyspepsia even now. I recollect it was the fashion one term to have a _cœur serré_; every one had an experience or a disappointment. I know half the school was in love with Garth. Well, we have flattened our faces long enough against this bottle-green glass; now we must go on to Elderberry Lodge." "Is that Captain Fawcett's?" "Yes; Mrs. Morris's, next door, is the Sycamores, and the Miss Palmers' is the Evergreens. Now I have talked myself hoarse for your benefit; it is your ladyship's turn now. There is the Captain himself working in his front garden; is he not a fine-looking man, Queenie?"