Hong came out of the dining room; the varnished buttercups twinkled in a sudden flood of light.  He had come to put a folded tablecloth into the old wardrobe that did for a sideboard, under the stairs.  Cherry, descending to earth, smiled at him, and crossed the hall to the sitting-room door.

An older woman might have gone upstairs, to dream alone of her new joy, but Cherry thought that it would be “fun” to join the family, and “act as if nothing had happened!” She was only a child, after all.

Consciously or unconsciously, they had all tried to keep her a child, these three who looked up to smile at her as she came in.  One of them, rosy, gray-headed, magnificent at sixty, was her father, whose favourite she knew she was.  He held out his hand to her without closing the book that was in the other hand, and drew her to the wide arm of his chair, where she settled herself with her soft young body resting against him, her slim ankles crossed, and her cheek dropped against his thick silver hair.

Alix was reading, and dreamily scratching her ankle as she read; she was a tall, awkward girl, younger far at twenty-one than Cherry was at eighteen, pretty in a gipsyish way, untidy as to hair, with round black eyes, high, thin cheek-bones marked with scarlet, and a wide, humorous mouth that was somehow droll in its expression even when she was angry or serious.  She was rarely angry; she was unexacting, good-humoured, preferring animals to people, and unconventional in speech and manner.  Her father and Anne sometimes discussed her anxiously; they confessed that they were rather fearful for Alix.  For Cherry, neither one had ever had a disquieting thought.

Anne, smiling demurely over her white sewing, was a small, prettily-made little woman, with silky hair trimly braided, and a rather pale, small face with charming and regular features.  She was not considered exactly pretty; perhaps the contrast with Cherry’s unusual beauty was rather hard on both the older girls; but she was so perfectly capable in her little groove, so busy, contented, and necessary in the doctor’s household, that it was rather a habit with all their friends to praise Anne.  Anne had “admirers,” too, Cherry reflected, looking at her to-night, but neither she nor Alix had ever been engaged—­engaged—­engaged!

“Aren’t you home early?” said Doctor Strickland, rubbing his cheek against his youngest daughter’s cheek in sleepy content.  He was never quite happy unless all three girls were in his sight, but for this girl he had always felt an especial protecting fondness.  It seemed only yesterday that Cherry, a rosy-cheeked sturdy little girl in a checked gingham apron, had been trotting off to school; to him it was yesterday that she had been a squarely-built baby, digging in the garden paths, and sniffing at the border pinks.  He had followed her exquisite childhood with more than a father’s usual devotion, perhaps because she really had been an exceptionally