“Some of ’em may be older than him, mayn’t they?  And one thing leads to another.  We might both get asked to stay with their folks.  Besides—­I don’t know that I should mind a man younger than me.  I’d know more what to do with him.  I’ve always found boys easier.  Men are so funny—­as if they were always keeping something to themselves.  I don’t like that.”

She looked indeed as though she might demand and take all she could get—­a girl greedy of life and the good things in it, or the things that to her seemed good.  She swooped down beside the little creature on the bed and flung an arm round her.  The younger girl’s personality seemed to be drowned in the bright effulgence of the elder as her slight form in the swelling folds of blue taffeta skirt that overflowed her.

“What about Mr. Tonkin?” ventured Phoebe; “he’d have you fast enough.  And he’s almost as good as a clergyman, though of course not as good as an officer....”

“Old Tonkin, indeed!” cried Vassie indignantly.  “I wouldn’t touch him if he was the only man alive.  Why, mother’s actually jealous of the way he tries to come patting and pawing me....  She can have him—­if she can get him.  Horrid, pale, fat old man!” She shook the thought of him from off her, and ran on:  “And when I’m a la—­I mean when I’m married, I’ll see what I can do for you, Phoebe.  You’re too soft ever to do any good for yourself.  As like as not you’d take any clumsy lout that offered, simply because you wouldn’t know how to say ‘No.’”

Phoebe said nothing, but a bright colour ran up over her pale skin and her soft mouth set in a little obstinate line.  The whole expression of her face altered when she set her lips so that they covered the two front teeth that at once made her face irregular and gave it individuality.  She lost her exquisite softness and became a little stupid, for it made the lower part of her face too brief—­what Vassie called “buttoned up.”  Phoebe was not actually pretty, but she was very alluring to men, or would be, simply because everything about her was feminine—­not womanly, but feminine.  Her mouse-brown hair, straight and soft and fine, refused to fall into the heavy polished curtains that were the mode, and which made of Vassie’s two waves of rich brass, bright and hard-edged as metal.  Phoebe’s eyes were brown, not of the opaque variety, but with the actually velvet look of a bee’s body.  The girls at school had told her her eyes looked good to stroke.  Her nose was an indeterminate snub, her chin delightfully round but retreating, falling away from a mouth like a baby’s—­so fine in texture, so petal soft, so utterly helpless-looking, with its glint of two small square teeth.  Only when she looked obstinate and closed her mouth the charm went out of her face as though wiped off like a tangible thing.  She looked almost sullen now, but Vassie, heedless of her, jumped up and, pirouetting round to show herself off once more and to give herself that feeling of mental poise for which physical well-being is needful, made for the door.  A swish, a flutter, a bang, and she was gone.