"At my age, you mean?" I added, with a smile; but I cannot affirm that the smile was untainted by bitterness. Frank nodded again. "You might be the same age as Fay and me, to hear you talk," he replied, with more graciousness than grammar. "I'll tell you what: Fay will like you most awfully. She is tremendously keen on people who have queer ideas and talk about feelings and things of that kind. She hates ordinary sort of talk about clothes and the weather and other people's servants, and she positively loathes information, or anything at all instructive." "Then I am afraid she and my sister will not have much in common," I said, little dreaming that, like Micaiah the son of Imlah, I was prophesying evil concerning me. "Not they! Fay'll have no use for Miss Kingsnorth, and not much for old Blathwayte. They'll be altogether too improving for her. But she'll take to you most tremendously, you bet!" I was elated at this. The approval of one's juniors is apt to go to one's head like wine. But at the same time I felt a certain disloyalty in being uplifted at Annabel's expense. "Fay will find my sister a very kind friend as well as a very competent one," I replied rather stiffly. But my stiffness was wasted on the desert air. "Oh, I'm sure Miss Kingsnorth is awfully kind," said Frank airily, "and so is old Blathwayte, if you come to that. But they aren't a bit Fay's sort. Just as really they aren't your sort, if they weren't your sister and your rector. Of course one would like one's sister, whatever she was; I should be fond of Fay, even if she was like Miss Kingsnorth; but she wouldn't be my sort, do you see? In the same way Fay and I would have been fond of Father whatever he'd have been like, just because he was our father. But he happened to be our sort as well, so we simply adored him." This slightly took my breath away. I had not yet been broken in to the custom of the rising generation of discussing their elders as freely as they discuss their contemporaries. The ancient tradition of ordering myself lowly and reverently before my betters still tainted my blood, and I had not outworn the Victorian creed that one's elders are of necessity one's betters. "It would never have occurred to me to consider whether my parents were my sort or not," I said. "It would to me--the very first thing. You see, some families are all the same sort, like a set of tea-things, while others are just a scratch team. We were all the same sort--Father and Fay and me. But you and Miss Kingsnorth are not the same pattern, nor the same make, nor even the same material. You are pure scratch." I smiled. Though I was devoted to Annabel, I did not exactly yearn to be considered like her. "Then do you honour me by considering me your sort as well as your sister's?"