“Aldiff,” repeated Baby obstinately.  Then she relented, and put one caressing little arm round her sister’s neck.

“I will say Miff MacCarfy iss you will say ze uzzer little pig, too.”

“Oh, send her away, Marguerite, do,” Aldith said impatiently, “I have an enthralling secret to tell you, and I’ll have to go soon.”

Meg looked interested immediately.

“Run away, Baby, dear,” she said, kissing the disappointed little face; “go and play Noah’s Ark with Bunty, and I’ll finish the piggies to-night or to-morrow.”

“But I want them now” Baby said insistently.

Meg pushed her gently aside.  “No, run away, pet—­run away at once like a good girl, and I’ll tell you Red Riding Hood, too, to-morrow.”

Baby looked up at her sister’s guest.”

“You are a horrid old pig, Aldiff MacCatfy,” she said, with slow emphasis, “an’ I hates you hard, an’ we all hates you here, ’ceps Meg; and Pip says you’re ze jammiest girl out, an’ I wis’ a drate big ziant would come and huff and puff and blow you into ze middlest part of ze sea.”

Aldith laughed, a little aggravating grown-up laugh, that put the finishing touch to Baby’s auger.  She put out her little hand and gave the guest’s arm in its muslin sleeve a sharp, scientific pinch that Pip had taught her.  Then she fled madly away down the long paddocks, to the bit of bush beyond.

“Insufferable,” Aldith muttered angrily, and it needed all Meg’s apologies and coaxings to get her into an amiable frame of mind again, and to induce her to communicate the enthralling secret.

At last, however, it was imparted, with great impressiveness.  Aldith’s eldest sister was engaged, engaged to be married!  Oh! wasn’t it heavenly?  Wasn’t it romantic?—­and to the gentleman with the long fair moustache who had been so much at their house lately.

“I knew it would come—­I have seen it coming for a long time.  Oh!  I’m not easily blinded;” Aldith said.  “I know true love when I see it.  Though certainly for myself I should prefer a dark moustache, should not you, Marguerite?”

“Ye—­es,” said Meg.  Her views were hardly formed yet on the subject.

“Jet black, with waxed ends, very stiff,” Aldith continued thoughtfully, “and a soldierly carriage, and very long black lashes.”

“So should I,” Meg said, fired in a moment.  “Like Guy Deloraine in ’Angelina’s Ambition’.”  Aldith put her arm more tightly round her friend.

“Wouldn’t it be heavenly, Marguerite, to be engaged—­you and I?” she said, in a tone of dreamy rapture.  “To have a dark, handsome man with proud black eyes just dying with love for you, going down on his knees, and giving you presents, and taking you out and all—­oh, Marguerite, just think of it!”

Melt’s eyes looked wistful.  “We’re not old enough, though, yet,” she said with a sigh.

Aldith tossed her head.  “That’s nonsense; why, Clara Allison is only seventeen, and look at your own stepmother.  Plenty of girls are actually married at sixteen, Marguerite, and a man proposed my sister Beatrice when she was only fifteen.”  Meg looked impressed and thoughtful.