the house, and opened the door of her aunts'
parlour. They were sitting on either side of the fireless grate with
their tea-table not yet cleared between them. Aunt Ellen, ninety-three
years of age, with a lace cap on her head and a white silk shawl over
her shoulders, was sitting upright in her low chair, knitting. She wore
no glasses, and her old hands, meagre, almost transparent, with large
knuckles, and skin that looked as if it had been polished, fumbled a
little with her needles and the thick wool. Her eyesight was failing,
though in the pride of her great age she would not acknowledge it; but
her hearing was almost perfect. Aunt Laura, who was seventy-five,
looked, except for her hair, which was not quite white, the older of the
two. She was bent and frail, and she had taken to spectacles some years
before, to which Aunt Ellen alluded every day of her life with contempt.
They said the same things to each other, on that and on other subjects,
time after time. Every day for years Aunt Ellen had said that if dear
Edward had only been able to cut down the trees in front of the house it
would give them more light and open up the view, and she had said it as
if it had only just occurred to her. And Aunt Laura had replied that she
had thought the same thing herself, and did Ellen remember how dear
Anne, who was always one to say out what she wanted, had asked him if he
thought it might be done, but he had said--quite kindly--that the trees
had always been there, and there they would stay.

The two old ladies welcomed Cicely as if she had been a princess with
whom it was their privilege to be on terms of affectionate intimacy. She
was, in fact, a princess in their little world, the daughter of the
reigning monarch, to whom they owed, and gave, loyal allegiance. Aunt
Laura had been up to the house that morning and heard that they were to
return by the half-past four o'clock train. They had been quite sure
that Cicely would come to see them at once and tell them all her news,
and they had debated whether they would wait for their own tea or not.
They had, in fact, waited for a quarter of an hour. They told her all
this in minute detail, and only by painstaking insistence was Aunt Ellen
herself prevented from rising to ring the bell for a fresh supply to be
brought in. "Well, my dear, if you are quite sure you won't," she said
at last, "I will ring for Rose to take the things away."

Cicely rang the bell, and Rose, who five