“A symphony, papa,” replied Norah.

“Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven!” added Magdalen.  “How can you say you were not amused?  Have you forgotten the yellow-looking foreign woman, with the unpronounceable name?  Don’t you remember the faces she made when she sang? and the way she courtesied and courtesied, till she cheated the foolish people into crying encore?  Look here, mamma—­look here, Miss Garth!”

She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a sheet of music, held it before her in the established concert-room position, and produced an imitation of the unfortunate singer’s grimaces and courtesyings, so accurately and quaintly true to the original, that her father roared with laughter; and even the footman (who came in at that moment with the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and committed the indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other side of the door.

“Letters, papa.  I want the key,” said Magdalen, passing from the imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard with the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions.

Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head.  Though his youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was easy to see where Magdalen’s unmethodical habits came from.

“I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other keys,” said Mr. Vanstone.  “Go and look for it, my dear.”

“You really should check Magdalen,” pleaded Mrs. Vanstone, addressing her husband when her daughter had left the room.  “Those habits of mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to you with a levity which it is positively shocking to hear.”

“Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating it,” remarked Miss Garth.  “She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a kind of younger brother of hers.”

“You are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind allowances for Magdalen’s high spirits—­don’t you?” said the quiet Norah, taking her father’s part and her sister’s with so little show of resolution on the surface that few observers would have been sharp enough to detect the genuine substance beneath it.

“Thank you, my dear,” said good-natured Mr. Vanstone.  “Thank you for a very pretty speech.  As for Magdalen,” he continued, addressing his wife and Miss Garth, “she’s an unbroken filly.  Let her caper and kick in the paddock to her heart’s content.  Time enough to break her to harness when she gets a little older.”

The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key.  She unlocked the post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a heap.  Sorting them gayly in less than a minute, she approached the breakfast-table with both hands full, and delivered the letters all round with the business-like rapidity of a London postman.