It must be said that no stranger would have taken Florence at first glance to be her niece, though everybody admitted that Florence’s hair was pretty. ("I’ll say that for her,” was the family way of putting it.).  Florence did not care for her hair herself; it was dark and thick and long, like her Aunt Julia’s; but Florence—­even in the realistic presence of a mirror—­preferred to think of herself as an ashen blonde, and also as about a foot taller than she was.  Persistence kept this picture habitually in her mind, which, of course, helps to explain her feeling that she was justified in wearing that manner of superciliousness deplored by her mother.  More middle-aged gentlemen than are suspected believe that they look like the waspen youths in the magazine advertisements of clothes; and this impression of theirs accounts (as with Florence) for much that is seemingly inexplicable in their behaviour.

Florence’s Aunt Julia was reading an exquisitely made little book, which bore her initials stamped in gold upon the cover; and it had evidently reached her by a recent delivery of the mail, for wrappings bearing cancelled stamps lay upon the floor beside the chaise longue.  It was a special sort of book, since its interior was not printed, but all laboriously written with pen and ink—­poems, in truth, containing more references to a lady named Julia than have appeared in any other poems since Herrick’s.  So warmly interested in the reading as to be rather pink, though not always with entire approval, this Julia nevertheless, at the sound of footsteps, closed the book and placed it beneath one of the cushions assisting the chaise longue to make her position a comfortable one.  Her greeting was not enthusiastic.

“What do you want, Florence?”

“I was going to ask you if Herbert and me—­I mean:  Was it Noble Dill gave you Fifi and Mimi, Aunt Julia?”

“Noble Dill?  No.”

“I wish it was,” Florence said.  “I’d like these cats better if they were from Noble Dill.”

“Why?” Julia inquired.  “Why are you so partial to Mr. Noble Dill?”

“I think he’s so much the most inter’sting looking of all that come to see you.  Are you sure it wasn’t Noble Dill gave you these cats, Aunt Julia?”

A look of weariness became plainly visible upon Miss Julia Atwater’s charming face.  “I do wish you’d hurry and grow up, Florence,” she said.

“I do, too!  What for, Aunt Julia?”

“So there’d be somebody else in the family of an eligible age.  I really think it’s an outrageous position to be in,” Julia continued, with languid vehemence—­“to be the only girl between thirteen and forty-one in a large connection of near relatives, including children, who all seem to think they haven’t anything to think of but Who comes to see her, and Who came to see her yesterday, and Who was here the day before, and Who’s coming to-morrow, and Who’s she going to marry!  You really ought to grow up and help me out, because I’m getting tired of it.  No.  It wasn’t Noble Dill but Mr. Newland Sanders that sent me Fifi and Mimi—­and I want you to keep away from ’em.”