girlish diffidence, which moved her rather to meet and
reflect the tastes and opinions of others than to exercise her own,
though she was by no means without individual capacity and character.

Rose was the least handsome of the family at this stage of her
existence. The family features in her had taken a slightly bizarre
cast, and she had a bad habit of wrinkling her smooth low forehead and
crumpling up her sharpish nose, in a manner which accentuated the
peculiarity. But Annie, who was an authority on the subject of looks,
maintained, behind Rose's back, that there was something _piquante_ and
_recherchee_ about Rose's face and figure. Not one of the Millars was
tall--not even May, though she came nearest to it; but Rose's slight
pliant figure had a natural grace and elegance which its quick,
careless movements did not dispel. When she held herself up, uncreased
her forehead and nose, showed to advantage her very fine, true chestnut
hair, and was full of animation--as to do Rose justice she generally
was--giving fair play to her dimples and little white teeth, Annie said
Rose had a style of her own which did no discredit to the family
reputation for more than a fair share of beauty. In addition to Annie's
high spirit and ready tongue, Rose had a decided turn for art, which
her father had taken pride in cultivating.

"Little May" was like Annie, and promised to be as pretty; but she was a
rose in the bud still, with the unfilled out outlines and crude
angularities of a girl not done growing. She was very much of a child in
many things, and she had Dora's soft clinging nature, yet under it all
she was the born scholar of the family, with a simple aptitude and taste
for learning which surprised and delighted her father still more than
Rose's achievements in pastilles and water-colours pleased him. It was
seeing May at her books, when she was a very different May from the girl
who ran about with Rose, and was kept in her proper place by Annie,
which revived in Doctor Millar the old regret that Providence had not
blessed him with a son. He could not exactly make a son of May, since
from her early childhood she was a little sensitive woman all over, but
he did what he could. He had her taught Latin, Greek, and mathematics
just to afford her the chance of being a scholar. He never told himself,
and nobody else did, in the meantime, what she was to do with her
scholarship when she was a little older. Whether it was merely to