those shrewd eyes did
not notice--but made no comment thereon, for, as he frequently observed
to his wife when she confided to him her troubles over Betty's
eccentricities, boys and girls who are in the transition stage between
childhood and maturity are apt to become a trifle restless and
eccentric, and it was wisdom to be for the most part judiciously blind,
interfering only in cases of right and wrong. Let the little maid run
with a loose rein for a time. She would soon settle down, and be the
first to laugh at her own foibles.

Mrs Trevor took her place, looking round on her assembled children with
the pretty, half-appealing little smile which was her greatest charm.
She was slight and graceful, not stout and elderly, like other people's
mothers. In the morning light she often looked wan and tired, but in
the kindly lamplight she seemed more like Betty's sister than the mother
of a rapidly growing up family.

Miles sat at her right hand, a tall, somewhat heavy-looking youth, with
enormous hands and feet, a square, determined jaw, and deep-set brown
eyes. Even a casual glance at him was sufficient to show that he was
going to make a man of power and determination, but, like Betty, he was
passing through his awkward stage, and was often neither easy nor
agreeable to live with.

Jack was just a mischievous schoolboy, with protruding ears and
twinkling eyes. One can see a score like him any day, marching,
marching along the street with satchels of books; but his twin sister
had a more striking personality. Jill was a mystery to her relations
and friends. She had ordinary brown hair, and not too much of that,
light blue eyes with indifferent lashes, a nose a shade more impertinent
than Betty's own, a big mouth, and a powdering of freckles under her
eyes; yet with those very ordinary equipments she managed to rank as a
beauty among her schoolmates, and to attract more admiration than is
vouchsafed to many people whose features might have been turned out of a
classic mould. Betty used to ponder wistfully over the secret of Jill's
charm, and think it hard lines that it had not been given to herself,
who would have cared for it so much more. Jill didn't care a pin how
she looked. She wanted to "have fun," to invite Nora Bruce to tea as
often as possible, to buy a constant supply of a special sort of almond
toffee which was offered for sale at a shop which she passed on the way
to school, to be a first-form girl