"A great deal stranger! It was not strange at all that little Mary Seymour should die. One saw it in her eyes; she was like an angel; it was natural; but poor Miss Brown, who was quite happy working cushions and covering them up, and keeping the sun off the carpets, and making lace for the brackets! It looks as if there was so little sense or method in it," said Cicely. "She won't have any cushions to work up there."
"I dare say there won't be anything to draw up there," said Mab; "and yet I suppose I shall die too in time."
"When there are the four walls for Leonardo, and Michel Angelo and Raphael and poor Andrea," said the other. "How you forget! Besides, it is quite different. Hark! what was that?" she cried, putting up her hand.
What it was soon became very distinctly evident--a feeble little cry speedily joined by another, and then a small weak chorus, two voices entangled together. "No, no; no ladies. Harry no like ladies," mixed with a whimpering appeal to "papa, papa."
"Come and see the pretty ladies. Harry never saw such pretty ladies," said the encouraging voice of Betsy in the passage.
The girls looked at each other, and grew red. They had made up their minds about a great many things, but never how they were to deal with the two children. Then Betsy appeared at the door, pushing it open before her with the tea-tray she carried. To her skirts were hanging two little boys, clinging to her, yet resisting her onward motion, and carried on by it in spite of themselves. They stared at the new-comers with big blue eyes wide open, awed into silence. They were very small and very pale, with light colourless limp locks falling over their little black dresses. The girls on their side stared silently too. There was not a feature in the children's faces which resembled their elder sisters. They were both little miniatures of Miss Brown.
"So these are the children," said Cicely, making a reluctant step forward; to which Harry and Charley responded by a renewed clutch at Betsy's dress.
"Yes, miss; them's the children! and darlings they be," said Betsy, looking fondly at them as she set down the tea. Cicely made another step forward slowly, and held out her hands to them; when the little boys set up a scream which rang through the house, and hiding their faces simultaneously in Betsy's gown, howled to be taken away. Mab put up her hands to her ears, but Cicely, more anxious to do her duty, made another attempt. She stooped down and kissed, or tried to kiss the little tear-stained faces, to which caress each small brother replied by pushing her away with a repeated roar.