or whether you
dress beautiful, or whether a thing is made to look pretty or otherwise.
We're all food for worms, dears, all of us, and where's the use of
fashing?"

"How horrid of you, nurse!" said Verena. "We have got beautiful bodies,
and our souls ought to be more beautiful still. What about the
resurrection of the body, you dreadful old nurse?"

"Oh, never mind me, dears; it was only a sort of dream I were dreaming of
the funeral of your poor dear mother, who died when this dear lamb was
born."

Here nurse patted the fat arm of the youngest hope of the house of Dale,
little Marjorie, who looked round at her with rosy face and big blue
eyes. Marjorie was between three and four years old, and was a very
beautiful little child. Verena, unable to restrain herself any longer,
bent down and encircled Marjorie with her strong young arms and clasped
her in an ecstatic embrace.

"There, now," she said; "I am better. I forbid all the rest of you girls
to touch Marjorie. Penelope, I'll kiss you later."

Penelope was seven years old--a dark child with a round face--not a
pretty child, but one full of wisdom and audacity.

"Whatever we do," Verena had said on several occasions, "we must not let
Penelope out of the nursery until she is quite eight years old. She is so
much the cleverest of us that she'd simply turn us all round her little
finger. She must stay with nurse as long as possible."

"I know what you are talking about," said Penelope. "It's about her, and
she's coming to-morrow. I told nurse, and she said she oughtn't never to
come."

"No, that she oughtn't," said nurse. "The child is alluding to Miss
Tredgold. She haven't no call here, and I don't know why she is coming."

"Look here, nurse," said Verena; "she is coming, and nothing in the world
will prevent her doing so. The thing we have to consider is this: how
soon will she go?"

"She'll go, I take it," said nurse, "as soon as ever she finds out she
ain't wanted."

"And how are we to tell her that?" said Verena. "Now, do put on your
considering-cap at once, you wise old woman."

"Yes, do show us the way out, for we can't have her here," said Briar.
"It is absolutely impossible. She'll try to turn us into fine ladies, and
she'll talk about the dresses we should have, and she'll want father to
get some awful woman to come and live with us. She'll want the whole
house to be turned topsy-turvy."

"Eh!" said nurse, "I'll tell you what it is. Ladies li