feet! Why, I
am five feet!"

Bee shook her wise head.

"If there aren't enough six-foot men to go round you've got to put up
with the five-foot ones," she said inexorably. "I have quite decided
that the first real man who asks me I shall accept. I don't mean silly
boys like Charlie and Graham, of course, who are only just starting
their medical course and then have to buy a practice and make it pay
before they can marry. Why, we should have crow's-feet round our eyes,
and thin, scraggy necks"--she passed a hand over her plump young
neck--"and be left to sit out at dances, if we waited for _them_!"

"I--I suppose so, Bee," said Dora faintly.

"Now, Dora!" said Bee sternly, "this won't do. I saw you trying to hide
the address on the envelope you posted this morning. You've written
another letter to that Graham."

"It was a very short one, Bee," said Dora meekly.

"Well, it won't do. Do, dear, you be guided by me and you will live to
thank me," said Beatrice.

"But, Bee," began Dora imploringly, "it is not _quite_ the same with me
as with you, is it? I'm only seventeen, and I'm the eldest. Don't you
think I could have just a little more fun?"

But the marvellous product of a worldly mother and a fashionable
boarding-school shook her pretty head vigorously.

"It's every bit as serious for you, Dora," she said. "Look at you, your
father's only a barrister, and you know you don't get a big dress
allowance, and there are lots of things you can't go to for want of
money. Then you have three sisters coming on. You owe it to them to
marry early and get out of the way. If Floss had taken that man----"

"The five-foot one?"

"Yes, certainly--don't be so frivolous, Dora--I repeat if Floss had
married--he was well off and clever, and really very nice, she owns--the
chances are the other three girls would have gone off early and been the
heads of beautiful homes to-day instead of dragging the rounds of season
after season and making me stay up at school till I simply refused point
blank to keep my hair down another day."

Dora heaved a submissive sigh. Those three chubby, pretty little sisters
of hers at home were very dear to her. And it was true they were "coming
on;" Amy, the eldest of them was thirteen. She would not stand in their
light.

"There's one thing," she said a little more hopefully, "I'm sure it
won't be me--he talks to you a lot more, Bee."

"That's only because I talk a lot more to him," said Bee, ni