“Well, young ladies,” he said, “I hope you enjoyed yourselves.”

“Vastly, thank you, Corporal Palmer.  And how has it been with my father in our absence?”

“Purely, Miss Harriet.  He relished the Friar’s chicken that Miss Delavie left for him, and he amused himself for an hour with Master Eugene, after which he did me the honour to play two plays at backgammon.”

“I hope,” said the eldest sister, coming up, “that the little rogue whom I saw peeping from the window has not been troublesome.”

“He has been as good as gold, madam.  He played in master’s room till Nannerl called him to his bed, when he went at once, ’true to his orders,’ says the master.  ‘A fine soldier he will make,’ says I to my master.”

Therewith the sisters mounted the uncarpeted but well-polished oak stair, knocked at the father’s door, and entered one by one, each dropping her curtsey, and, though the eldest was five-and-twenty, neither speaking nor sitting till they were greeted with a hearty, “Come, my young maids, sit you down and tell your old father your gay doings.”

The eldest took the only unoccupied chair, while the other two placed themselves on the window-seat, all bolt upright, with both little high heels on the floor, in none of the easy attitudes of damsels of later date, talking over a party.  All three were complete gentlewomen in air and manners, though Betty had high cheek-bones, a large nose, rough complexion, and red hair, and her countenance was more loveable and trustworthy than symmetrical.  The dainty decorations of youth looked grotesque upon her, and she was so well aware of the fact as to put on no more than was absolutely essential to a lady of birth and breeding.  Harriet (pronounced Hawyot), the next in age, had a small well-set head, a pretty neck, and fine dark eyes, but the small-pox had made havoc of her bloom, and left its traces on cheek and brow.  The wreck of her beauty had given her a discontented, fretful expression, which rendered her far less pleasing than honest, homely Betty, though she employed all the devices of the toilette to conceal the ravages of the malady and enhance her remaining advantages of shape and carriage.

There was an air of vexation about her as her father asked, “Well, how many conquests has my little Aurelia made?” She could not but recollect how triumphantly she had listened to the same inquiry after her own first appearance, scarcely three short years ago.  Yet she grudged nothing to Aurelia, her junior by five years, who was for the first time arrayed as a full-grown belle, in a pale blue, tight-sleeved, long-waisted silk, open and looped up over a primrose skirt, embroidered by her own hands with tiny blue butterflies hovering over harebells.  There were blue silk shoes, likewise home-made, with silver buckles, and the long mittens and deep lace ruffles were of Betty’s fabrication.  Even the dress itself had been cut by Harriet from old wedding hoards of their mother’s, and made up after the last mode imported by Madam Churchill at the Deanery.