at vingt-un; and they were so desirous of her advice in the important point of fixing the price of the counters that she could not even have joined in in the animated tete-a-tete going on between Roger and Cynthia.  Or rather, it would be more correct to say that Roger was talking in a most animated manner to Cynthia, whose sweet eyes were fixed upon his face with a look of great interest in all he was saying, while it was only now and then she made her low replies.  Molly caught a few words occasionally in intervals of business.

’At my uncle’s, we always gave a silver threepence for three dozen.  You know what a silver threepence is, don’t you, dear Miss Gibson?’

’The three classes are published in the Senate House at nine o’clock on the Friday morning, and you can’t imagine—­’

’I think it will be thought rather shabby to play at anything less than sixpence.  That gentleman’ (this in a whisper) ’is at Cambridge, and you know they always play very high there, and sometimes ruin themselves, don’t they, dear Miss Gibson?’

’Oh, on this occasion the Master of Arts who precedes the candidates for honours when they go into the Senate House is called the Father of the College to which he belongs.  I think I mentioned that before, didn’t I?’

So Cynthia was hearing all about Cambridge, and the very examination about which Molly had felt such keen interest, without having ever been able to have her questions answered by a competent person; and Roger, to whom she had always looked as the final and most satisfactory answerer, was telling all she wanted to know, and she could not listen.  It took all her patience to make up little packets of counters, and settle, as the arbiter of the game, whether it would be better for the round or the oblong counters to be reckoned as six.  And when all was done, and every one sate in their places round the table, Roger and Cynthia had to be called twice before they came.  They stood up, it is true, at the first sound of their names; but they did not move:  Roger went on talking, Cynthia listening, till the second call—­when they hurried to the table and tried to appear all on a sudden quite interested in the great questions of the game, namely, the price of three dozen counters, and whether, all things considered, it would be better to call the round counters or the oblong half-a-dozen each.  Miss Browning, drumming the pack of cards on the table, and quite ready to begin dealing, decided the matter by saying, ’Rounds are sixes, and three dozen counters cost sixpence.  Pay up, if you please, and let us begin at once.’  Cynthia sate between Roger and William Osborne, the young schoolboy, who bitterly resented on this occasion his sisters’ habit of calling him ‘Willie,’ as he thought that it was this boyish sobriquet which prevented Cynthia from attending as much to him as to Mr. Roger Hamley; he also was charmed by the charmer, who found leisure to give him one or two of her sweet smiles.  On his return home to his grandmamma’s he gave out one or two very decided and rather original opinions, quite opposed—­as was natural—­to his sisters’.  One was,—­