Prue ran up-stairs; the girls heard Mrs. Grey going through the house to find Lydia in the kitchen. Accustomed as she was to seeing Prue, Frances felt anew, as she always did each time that she saw her, the startling quality of the youngest Grey girl's great beauty. During the past year Prue had grown amazingly, and had shot up into a slender creature that topped by nearly a head Rob, who had seemed fairly tall until Prue accomplished this feat. Her complexion was white with not a hint of colour, unless it was brought there by her emotions, or whipped into her cheeks by the breeze. Her features were faultlessly regular; her hair bright gold, silky and abundant, flying like floss around her low white brow. Her lips relieved the pallor of her face by their warm crimson, and from under the golden crown of hair, which the tall young creature wore proudly, there looked out a pair of large dark brown eyes that startled one by their contrast with their surroundings. There was no question that Prue was not only the beauty of the family, but that she had grown into a beauty of a rare type and of a very high rank. Unfortunately, she was conscious of her effect, although she was hardly to blame for this, since every one, except her wise mother and sisters, flattered her. It was a lucky thing for Prue that Wythie's sweetness and Rob's charm surpassed in the long run the attraction of Prue's dazzling beauty; for, otherwise, she might have forgotten altogether that beauty is by no means the only gift that the good fairies can bestow at a christening. "I thought I should find you here, Frances. Here is a letter for you, Rob, but there was no other. I saw Battalion B down by the post-office; I thought they went back this morning," said Prue, dropping a letter in Rob's lap, and laying her hat on her knee as she seated herself beside Wythie and picked out the edges of its bows. "No; Basil said he had to meet Mr. Dinsmore--they are having some trouble with their landlord, and Basil said if they couldn't get it straightened up they would buy the Caldwell place. It isn't really their landlord, but his agent that bothers them," said Wythie, trying to mention Basil Rutherford's name in the same old, easy, unconscious way she had used it when Battalion B and the Grey girls had first become friends. "And Bruce wanted to see Dr. Fairbairn, so they all waited to go back to New Haven this afternoon--of course Bartlemy waited to go with Basil and Bruce."