The Towers was a combination of feudal castle and Swiss chalet erected thirty years before by the parents of Augustus, and occupying a commanding position on Sunset Ridge.  The irreverent sometimes referred to it as the Salt Shakers.

Margaret Elizabeth meanwhile, in the solitude of her own room, was asking herself questions, for which she found no answers.

“Who—­oh, who was this person with the nice friendly eyes that led one on to talk about fairy godmothers?”

She considered it in profound seriousness for a time, then suddenly broke into unrestrained laughter.

CHAPTER SIX

In which Margaret Elizabeth is discussed at the Breakfast Table; in which also, later on, she and Virginia and Uncle Bob talk before the fire, and in which finally Margaret Elizabeth seeks consolation by relating to Uncle Bob her adventure in the park.

“No, she is not regularly beautiful,” remarked Dr. Prue in her diagnostician manner as she poured her father’s second cup of coffee, “but there is much that is captivating about her.  Her hair grows prettily on her forehead, the firmness of her chin, the line of her lips in repose——­”

“Mercy on us!  You talk like a novel,” interrupted Uncle Bob, who was longing to get in an oar.  “Now I like her best when she laughs.”

“But I was speaking of her face in repose.”

“And any way,” persisted Uncle Bob, “if she isn’t a beauty, I don’t know what you call it.  She has the witchingest ways!”

“We were speaking of features, not ways.  If you dissect her——­”

“Good Heavens, Prue!  Find another word.”

“If you dissect her,” the doctor repeated firmly, “you will find nothing remarkable in her separate features.”

“But I insist,” Uncle Bob spoke in a loud tone, and brought his fist down so emphatically his coffee spilled over into the saucer, “that beauty is a complex thing consisting of ways as well as features.”  The sentence was concluded in a milder tone, owing to the coffee.

“Nancy, give Mr. Vandegrift another saucer,” said Dr. Prue.

“My dear, there is no need.  I can pour this back,” he protested.  Then, a fresh saucer having been substituted, he went on:  “Take a landscape——­”

“I haven’t time for landscapes this morning, father.  I am due at the hospital at nine.  You’ll have to excuse me.”

“Well, what I was going to say is, that it is the combination of all her separate qualities and characteristics, manifested in ways and otherwise, that is beautiful—­that constitutes beauty.  The something that makes her Margaret Elizabeth, that subtle—­” Uncle Bob was talking against time.

“Now, father,” Dr. Prue pushed back her chair and rose, “there is nothing subtle about Margaret Elizabeth, and you know it.  She is a thoroughly nice, quite pretty girl, and that is all there is to it.  If those Penningtons don’t spoil her.”  With this the doctor disappeared.