rate!" So on,
and so on, and at each summons in rushed an eager little worker, so
deft, so willing, so incredibly quick in her movements, that her
mistresses were overcome with admiration.

"Your hands do you more credit than your brains, young woman!"
pronounced Kate judicially. "You will never be a mistress of a High
School; but you are a born lady's-maid, and you can come to me for a
reference when you need it."

"That's what Esmeralda says. I am going to be her maid when she marries
the duke. He comes down to hunt near Bally William, but he really lives
in England, in the most beautiful palace, with peacocks on the lawn.
Esmeralda's going to have the drawing-room papered in yellow, to suit
her complexion, and to set the fashion of having little sisters to wait
upon you, like pages in old story-books," returned Pixie, with her mouth
full of hairpins, and there was a rustle of excitement in the different
cubicles.

"Esmeralda engaged! You never told us! To a duke. Which duke? How
lovely for her! When are they going to get married?"

"Now indeed I can't tell you!" returned Pixie regretfully. She was
proudly conscious of having made a sensation, and it did seem hard to be
obliged to dispel it as soon as it was made! "There's nothing settled,
for, to tell you the truth, he has never so much as seen her yet, but
she was visiting old Biddy Gallagher when he drove past to the meet, and
at lunch says she, `He's the elegant creature, that duke! I'm thinking
of marrying him myself!' and took Bridgie's advice on the trousseau that
very afternoon. She says she won't be engaged until she is twenty-one,
and that it's a pity to unsettle him about it yet awhile, as there's
over two years to wait. He wouldn't want to wait if he saw her, for
she's more beautiful than anyone you ever saw out of a picture, though
it's himself I pity when the tantrums is on her. We often talk about
it, and plan how we will spend his money, and if you want to put her in
a good temper you've nothing to do but call her `Your Grace!'"

"I never heard anything so silly!" cried Ethel scornfully. Kate gave a
mild "He, he!" as she watched the process of hair-dressing in the
mirror, and reflected pensively that spectacles seemed strangely out of
keeping with evening dress. There was no doubt about it, she was
astonishingly plain, and oh, how nice it must be to be beautiful like
Esmeralda--so beautiful that even your own brothers and sisters