Ada, the second daughter, taught in a school. She was twenty-seven, tall like her brother, and with a fair, babyish face like his. It seems to be the rule in the pages of fiction, even at the present day, to depict unmarried women of this age as both feeling and looking no longer young—as a matter of fact, a girl of twenty-seven is rarely distinguishable from one of twenty-three, and is often more attractive. Ada Snow had been, besides, one of those immature young persons who grow up late, and become graceful and natural in society only after long custom; at twenty, shy and awkward, she had usually been mistaken for sixteen. She was her brother’s favorite, secretly aiding and abetting him in many evasions of the maternal law; she tied his cravats for him now, and got up little suppers for him, and he posed as her elder, in view of his height and large experience. The other sister, Bertha, was a delicate and much older woman, dark-haired, lined and sallow, given to intermittent nerve-prostrations and neuralgia, yet keeping a certain sanity and strength of mind hidden beneath an accumulation of small interests. She seldom went out, but sat by a window in the sitting-room all day, screened by the steaming plants, embroidering on linen, and keeping tally of the persons who went up and down the street, the number of oranges bought out of a cart, and the frequency of the meetings of two servants over a boundary fence—incidents of note in themselves without further connection. She seemed almost inconceivably petty in conversation and idea, but if one were strong enough to speak only to the truth that was in her, she could answer. She was honest and she was loyal; she knew a friend. She had worked hard for her mother in her early youth—that little mother who now looked almost younger than she, as she came into the room from her interview with William, and sat down by her daughter to say, in a tone of the mother who believes no secret is hid from her: “William won’t tell me what’s the matter, but I know it’s something to do with that girl at the Alexanders’. Willie is growing up so fast!” “Oh, yes, if you mean Miss Linden,” said Miss Bertha, in comfortable corroboration. “That’s been going on for some weeks.” “Yes, I know; but he acts differently this time. Perhaps she’s snubbed him in some way.” “No, he was there the other night, and he is to take her skating Saturday. I saw the note open on his bureau. Maybe, after all, it’s just being in love that upsets him.” “Yes, I really think that’s all.” Miss Bertha put her work down on her lap, and smoothed it out with slender, nervous fingers, before rolling it up in a thin white cloth. The daylight was beginning to go.