herself to the last piece of muffin in the dish. CHAPTER VIII CANDID OPINIONS We train up our children, kindly or harshly, according to our temperaments, that they may walk along a certain road. The road is usually one of several, and it is an almost invariable chance that our children will take one contrary to that of our choice. Let there be no mistake about the Whittaker girls. They were not in any way deceived or blinded by their mother's partiality for them. "There is one thing you and I have got to make up our minds to, Maudie," said Julia, the day after they had had the little serious talk with their mother. "It's one thing to climb up a wall, it's another to topple over on the other side. If we don't look out what we are doing, _we_ shall topple over the other side of our wall." "I don't understand you," said Maudie; "at least not quite." "Well, it's like this," remarked Julia. "We have got to take everything that mother says as partly being mother's way. I don't know whether you have ever noticed it, Maudie, but mother never half does things. That's why she's such a splendid worker on all these committees she goes in for. Mother calls us beauties; she says you are purely Greek in type, and that I am a cross between the French and Irish styles of beauty. Well, that's as may be. We can't go against mother; it would be rude--besides, it wouldn't be any good--but you and I needn't stuff each other up--or even ourselves for that matter with the idea that we are going to set the world on fire with our faces. We sha'n't," she ended conclusively. "I think you are rather nice-looking, Ju," said Maudie. "Do you? I don't agree with you. But that's neither here nor there. As to your being purely Greek--well, don't understand that either. I never saw a Greek that was the least little bit like you. You remember those girls at Madame's? Why, they had a touch of the East about them; they were next door to natives. I used to talk to them about it. I told them that I never knew Greeks were so dark--I always had an idea Greeks were fair people--but Zoe declared they were the common or garden pattern, and that a fair Greek was a thing almost unheard of." "That's all rubbish and nonsense!" said Maudie in a more dominant tone than was her wont. "Do you remember Maurice Dolmanides?" "The man who was at the boarding-house in Paris? Of course I do." "Well, he was ginger." "So he was--yes. And he was a Greek, wasn't he? All the same, Maudie, he had a Scotch mother, you know." "Ah, I see. Yes, that does make a difference." "I assure you," Julia went on, "that I talked it over with Zoe and Olga, and they both declared that they were the ordinary Greek type--round features, round black eyes, masses of coal-black hair, palest of olive skins. There's a touch of the Orient about it. But you, you are blonde; your nose has got a bump in the middle of it, your mouth is far from Greek--"