at? go on my knees to those wax dolls, and entreat them to let
me pet them and make idols of them--as you will do?"

"Well, how are you getting on now?" said Sir Robert, coming in. "Ah! I
see, you have the window open; but the room is still very warm. When
they get to Easton they will have their own rooms of course. I don't
want to reflect upon John, but it is rather a burden this he has saddled
us with. Mrs. John's mother is living, isn't she? I think something
might have been _said_ at least, on her part, some offer to take her
share."

Sophy gave her sister a malicious glance, but promptly changed her tone,
and took up her position in defence of the arrangement, with that ease
which is natural in a family question.

"Of course," she said, "your grandchildren, Dorsets, and the heir,
probably, as Robert has no boy, could go nowhere, papa, but to us. It
may be a bore, but at least John showed so much sense; for nothing else
could be----"

"John does not show very much sense in an ordinary way. What did he want
with a wife and children at his age? The boy is five, isn't he? and the
father only thirty--absurd! I did not marry till I was thirty, though I
had succeeded before that time, and was the only son and the head of the
family. John was always an ass," said Sir Robert, with a crossness which
sprang chiefly from the fact that the temperature of the room was higher
than usual, and the habits of his evening interfered with. He was
capable of sacrificing something of much more importance to his family,
but scarcely of sacrificing his comfort, which is the last and most
painful of efforts.

"That may be very true," said Sophy, "but all the same, it is only right
that the children should be with us. Mrs. John's people are not well
off. Her mother has a large family of her own. The little things would
have been spoiled, or they would have been neglected; and after all,
they are Dorsets, though they are not like John."

"Well, well, I suppose you are right," said Sir Robert, grumbling, "and,
thank Heaven, to-morrow we shall be at home."

Anne had scarcely said a word, though it was she who was most deeply
concerned about the children. She gave her sister a hug when Sir Robert
relapsed into the evening paper, and then stole upstairs to look at the
poor babies as they lay asleep. She was not a mother, and never would
be. People, indeed, called her an old maid, and with reason enough,
though she was little over thirty;