Mrs. Dolman was the life and soul of this extremely orderly English home.  She was one of the most active little women in the world.  She invariably got up, summer and winter, soon after six o’clock, and might be seen bustling about the house, and bustling about the garden, and bustling about the parish from that moment until she retired to rest again, somewhere between ten and eleven at night.  She was never exactly cross, but she was very determined.  She had strict ideas, and made everyone in the parish not only respect her and look up to her, but live up to her rule of life.  She was, as a matter of fact, thought a great deal more of by the parishioners than her husband, the Reverend William Dolman, and the real Rector of Super-Ashton.

Mr. Dolman was a very large man, tall in stature and broad.  He was also fat and loosely built.  He had a kindly face and a good-humored way of talking.  He preached very fair sermons on Sundays, and attended to his duties, but without any of the enthusiasm which his wife displayed.

When Mrs. Dolman wrote to her husband to say that she was returning home with the four little Delaneys, it caused considerable excitement at the breakfast table.  Five little hearts beat considerably faster than usual; but so great were the order and regularity of the household that the five little faces to which the hearts belonged remained apparently impassive.

Miss Ramsay, the governess, was presiding at the head of the table.  The Dolman girls were neatly dressed in print frocks with white pinafores; the boys wore holland blouses and knickerbockers.  The boys happened to be the two youngest of the family, and none of the children had yet gone to school.  The name and ages of the five were as follows:  First came Lucy, aged twelve; then Mary, aged ten; then Ann, aged nine; then Philip and Conrad, aged respectively seven and a half and six.  The faces of the whole five bore a curious resemblance to both father and mother, the eldest girl having the round, black eyes of her mother, and the large, somewhat irregular features of the father.  Mary resembled Lucy in being fat and largely built, but her eyes were blue instead of black; while little Ann had a small face, with gray eyes and rather sensitive lips.  The complexions of the three were fair, and their good looks were rather above the average.  They were proper, neat-looking little girls, and, notwithstanding their inward excitement, they ate their breakfast tidily, and took good care not to express any emotion before Miss Ramsay or their good-natured father.

“Yes,” said Mr. Dolman, looking at them, and pushing his spectacles up on his forehead, “yes, that is the news.  Your mother returns to-night, and the four Delaneys with her.  Let me see what else she says.”  He replaced his spectacles on his nose and looked over his wife’s letter again.  “These are the very words,” he said; “Observe, Miss Ramsay, that I read from the letter.  ’I return by the train which reaches Super-Ashton at six o’clock, and will bring the four Delaneys with me.’  Four, you see, Lucy; that is the number.  But mamma does not mention the sex of the children.  How many boys or how many girls?  I really am quite out of date with regard to your cousins, my love.”