nclined to
be ruddy; it surmounted her small head in coils and plaits not without
beauty. The voice of the elder sister had contracted an unpleasant
hoarseness, but she spoke with good enunciation; a slight stiffness and
pedantry of phrase came, no doubt, of her scholastic habits. Virginia
was much more natural in manner and fluent in speech, even as she moved
far more gracefully.

It was now sixteen years since the death of Dr. Madden of Clevedon. The
story of his daughters' lives in the interval may be told with brevity
suitable to so unexciting a narrative.

When the doctor's affairs were set in order, it was found that the
patrimony of his six girls amounted, as nearly as possible, to eight
hundred pounds.

Eight hundred pounds is, to be sure, a sum of money; but how, in these
circumstances, was it to be applied?

There came over from Cheltenham a bachelor uncle, aged about sixty.
This gentleman lived on an annuity of seventy pounds, which would
terminate when _he_ did. It might be reckoned to him for righteousness
that he spent the railway fare between Cheltenham and Clevedon to
attend his brother's funeral, and to speak a kind word to his nieces.
Influence he had none; initiative, very little. There was no reckoning
upon him for aid of any kind.

From Richmond in Yorkshire, in reply to a letter from Alice, wrote an
old, old aunt of the late Mrs. Madden, who had occasionally sent the
girls presents. Her communication was barely legible; it seemed to
contain fortifying texts of Scripture, but nothing in the way of
worldly counsel. This old lady had no possessions to bequeath. And, as
far as the girls knew, she was their mother's only surviving relative.

The executor of the will was a Clevedon tradesman, a kind and capable
friend of the family for many years, a man of parts and attainments
superior to his station. In council with certain other well-disposed
persons, who regarded the Maddens' circumstances with friendly anxiety,
Mr. Hungerford (testamentary instruction allowing him much freedom of
action) decided that the three elder girls must forthwith become
self-supporting, and that the three younger should live together in the
care of a lady of small means, who offered to house and keep them for
the bare outlay necessitated. A prudent investment of the eight hundred
pounds might, by this arrangement, feed, clothe, and in some sort
educate Martha, Isabel, and Monica. To see thus far ahead sufficed for
the