The next on the list—­I am going from youngest to oldest, you see—­was the “show” Woolcot, as Pip, the eldest boy, used to say.  You have seen those exquisite child-angel faces on Raphael Tuck’s Christmas cards?  I think the artist must just have dreamed of Nell, and then reproduced the vision imperfectly.  She was ten, and had a little fairy-like figure, gold hair clustering in wonderful waves and curls around her face, soft hazel eyes, and a little rosebud of a mouth.  She was not conceited either, her family took care of that—­Pip would have nipped such a weakness very sternly in its earliest bud; but in some way if there was a pretty ribbon to spare, or a breadth of bright material; just enough for one little frock, it fell as a matter of course to her.

Judy was only three years older, but was the greatest contrast imaginable.  Nellie used to move rather slowly about, and would have made a picture in any attitude.  Judy I think, was never seen to walk, and seldom looked picturesque.  If she did not dash madly to the place she wished to get to, she would progress by a series of jumps, bounds, and odd little skips.  She was very thin, as people generally are who have quicksilver instead of blood in their veins; she had a small, eager, freckled face, with very, bright dark eyes, a small, determined mouth, and a mane of untidy, curly dark hair that was:  the trial of her life.

Without doubt she was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.  Her brilliant inventive powers plunged them all into ceaseless scrapes, and though she often bore the brunt of the blame with equanimity, they used to turn round, not infrequently, and upbraid her for suggesting the mischief.  She had been christened “Helen,” which in no way account’s for “Judy,” but then nicknames are rather unaccountable things sometimes, are they not?  Bunty said it was because she was always popping and jerking herself about like the celebrated wife of Punch, and there really is something in that.  Her other name, “Fizz,” is easier to understand; Pip used to say he never yet had seen the ginger ale that effervesced and bubbled and made the noise that Judy did,

I haven’t introduced you to Pip yet, have I?  He was a little like Judy, only handsomer and taller, and he was fourteen, and had as good an opinion, of himself and as poor a one of girls as boys of that age generally have.

Meg was the eldest of the family, and had a long, fair plait that Bunty used to delight in pulling; a sweet, rather dreamy face, and a powdering of pretty freckles that occasioned her much tribulation of spirit.

It was generally believed in the family that she wrote poetry and stories, and even kept a diary, but no one had ever seen a vestige of her papers, she kept them so carefully locked up in her, old tin hat-box.  Their father, had you asked them they would all have replied with considerable pride, was “a military man,” and much from home.  He did not understand children at all, and was always grumbling at the noise they made, and the money they cost.  Still, I think he was rather proud of Pip, and sometimes, if Nellie were prettily dressed, he would take her out with him in his dogcart.