. The Carrolls were an
easy-to-laugh family, and always seemed to find delicious humor in
one another's remarks.

"Amy never thinks any of us can catch anything," said Charlotte, the
younger daughter, and they all laughed again.

Mrs. Carroll was always Amy in her family. Never did one of her
children address her as a parent.

They were a charming group in the little, green, gloomy place, each
with the strongest possible family likeness to the others. They were
as much alike as the roses on one bush; all were, although not tall,
long, and slim of body, and childishly round of face, with delicate
coloring; all had pathetic dark eyes and soft lengths of dark hair.
Mrs. Carroll and her husband's sister, although not nearly related
(Mrs. Carroll had married her many-times-removed cousin), resembled
each other as if they had been sisters of one family, and the
children resembled their mother. The only difference among any of
them was a slight difference of expression that existed mostly in the
youngest girl, Charlotte. There were occasions when Charlotte
Carroll's expression of soft and pathetic wistfulness and pleading
could change to an expression of defiance, almost fierceness.

Her mother often told her that she resembled in disposition her
paternal grandmother, who had been a woman of high temper, albeit a
great beauty.

"Charlotte, dear, you are just like your grandmother, dear Arthur's
mother, who was the worst-tempered and loveliest woman in Kentucky,"
Mrs. Carroll often remarked. She scarcely sounded the _t_ in
Kentucky, since she also was of the South, where the languid air
tends to produce elisions. The Carrolls came originally from
Kentucky, and had lived there until after the births of the two
daughters. When they were scarcely more than infants, Arthur Carroll
had experienced the petty and individual, but none the less real,
cataclysm of experience which comes to most men sooner or later. It
is the earthquake of a unit, infinitesimal, but entirely complete of
its kind, and possibly as far-reaching in its thread of consequences.
Arthur Carroll had had his palmy days, when he was working with great
profits, and, as he believed, with entire righteousness and regard to
his fellow-men, a coal-mine in the Kentucky mountains. He had
inherited it from his father, as the larger part of his patrimony.
When most of the property had been dissipated, at the time of the
civil war, the elder Carroll, who was broken by