r. It's very likely she'll prefer the Aspen Street house; and
it _would_ be out of the way for you. Still it is not to be
_refused_, you know; of course it is very desirable in many
respects; roomy, old-fashioned, and a garden. I think your sister
will like those things; they're what she has been used to. If she
does, why it's all comfortably settled, and nobody refuses. It is so
ungracious to appear to object; a gift horse, you know."

"Not to be refused; only by no means to be taken; masterly
inactivity till somebody else is hooked; and then somebody else is
to be grateful for the preference. I wish Mrs. Megilp wouldn't shine
things up so; and that mother wouldn't go to her to black all her
boots!"

Desire said this in secret, indignant discomfort, to Helena, the
fourth in the family, her chum-sister. Helena did very well to talk
to; she heard anything; then she pranced round the room and chaffed
the canary.

"Chee! chee! chee! chiddle, iddle, iddle, iddle, e-e-ee! Where do
you keep all your noise and your breath? You're great, aren't you?
You do that to spite people that have to work up one note at a time.
You don't take it in away down under your belt, do you? You're not
particular about that. You don't know much, after all. You don't
know _how_ you do it. You aren't learning of Madame Caroletti. And
you haven't learned two quarters, any way. You were only just born
last spring. Set up! Tr-r-r-r-e-e-ee! I can do that myself. I don't
believe you've got an octave in you. Poh!"

Mrs. Ripwinkley came down from the country with a bonnet on that
had a crown, and with not a particle of a chignon. When she was
married, twenty-five years before, she wore a French twist,--her
hair turned up in waves from her neck as prettily as it did away
from her forehead,--and two thick coiled loops were knotted and
fastened gracefully at the top. She had kept on twisting her hair
so, all these years; and the rippling folds turned naturally under
her fingers into their places. The color was bright still, and it
had not thinned. Over her brows it parted richly, with no fuzz or
crimp; but a sweet natural wreathing look that made her face young.
Mrs. Ledwith had done hers over slate-pencils till she had burned it
off; and now tied on a friz, that came low down, for fashion's sake,
and left visible only a little bunch of puckers between her eyebrows
and the crowsfeet at the corners. The back of her head was weighted
down by an immense ex