white muslin frock, with a black ribbon around her slim waist; but the ribbon was clasped by a buckle of heavily chased gold, and her fingers had many rings on them, and looked—­a very rare circumstance—­the better for them.  Having put down her book, she rose from her chair; and as she dipped the tips of her hands in water, and wiped them with elaborate nicety, she talked to Charlotte in a soft, deliberate way.

“Where have you been, you and father, ever since daybreak?”

“Up to Blaeberry Tarn, and then home by Holler Beck.  We caught a creel full of trout, and had a very happy day.”

“Really, you know?”

“Yes, really; why not?”

“I cannot understand it, Charlotte.  I suppose we never were sisters before.”  She said the words with the air of one who rather states a fact than asks a question; and Charlotte, not at all comprehending, looked at her curiously and interrogatively.

“I mean that our relationship in this life does not touch our anterior lives.”

“Oh, you know you are talking nonsense, Sophia!  It gives me such a feel, you can’t tell, to think of having lived before; and I don’t believe it.  There, now!  Come, dear, let us go to dinner; I’m that hungry I’m fit to drop.”  For Charlotte was watching, with a feeling of injury, Sophia’s leisurely method of putting every book and chair and hairpin in its place.

The sisters’ rooms were precisely alike in their general features, and yet there was as great a relative difference in their apartments as in their natures.  Both were large, low rooms, facing the sunrise.  The walls of both were of dark oak; the roofs of both were of the same sombre wood; so also were the floors.  They were literally oak chambers.  And in both rooms the draperies of the beds, chairs, and windows were of white dimity.  But in Sophia’s, there were many pictures, souvenirs of girlhood’s friendships, needlework, finished and unfinished drawings, and a great number of books mostly on subjects not usually attractive to young women.  Charlotte’s room had no pictures on its walls, and no odds and ends of memorials; and as sewing was to her a duty and not a pleasure, there was no crotcheting or Berlin-wool work in hand; and with the exception of a handsome copy of “Izaak Walton,” there were no books on her table but a Bible, Book of Common Prayer, and a very shabby Thomas a Kempis.

So dissimilar were the girls in their appearance and their tastes; and yet they loved each other with that calm, habitual, family affection, which, undemonstrative as it is, stands the wear and tug of life with a wonderful tenacity.  Down the broad, oak stairway they sauntered together; Charlotte’s tall, erect figure, bright, loose hair, pink dress, and flowing ribbons, throwing into effective contrast the dark hair, dark eyes, white drapery, and gleaming ornaments of her elder sister.

In the hall they met the squire.  He was very fond and very proud of his daughters; and he gave his right arm to Sophia, and slipped his left hand into Charlotte’s hand with an affectionate pride and confidence that was charming.