ny curiosities of
Queen Anne's reign.

But Rose and May had no certainty that Annie was the object of pursuit.
She was pretty enough, they had all pinned their faith to her beauty,
yet already Dora had been preferred before her, though it was only by
the head of "Robinson's." Was it possible that now it might be Rose,
unsuspecting, unconsulted? Could her own mother and sisters be so unfair
as to arrogate to themselves the settlement of her affairs without her
consent or knowledge, without so much as admitting her into the
conclave?

Annie took the initiative, she was sufficiently quick to see both behind
and before her. She had a head for directing and managing which her
mother did not possess.

"Mother, don't you see they had better be told at once?" she said, with
the aplomb of a girl who, however young and irresponsible, is capable of
arriving at independent conclusions and reversing existing conditions.
"They are, as Rose says, all but grown up; indeed not so very much
younger than Dora and I. I think Rose and May are entitled to be told."

Annie was proceeding to act upon the permission implied in her mother's
nod. She was not without some small sense of personal importance in
being the mouthpiece which was to announce the calamity to her younger
sisters. She did it in a very different fashion from that in which their
mother had broken the news to her and Dora.

"What we are going to speak to you about is not a thing that can be long
concealed. It will not be a secret for more than a few days, if for so
long. But that does not mean that you are not to shut this room door
which you have left wide open. Thanks, May. Don't bang it! You are not
to show that you know what is going to happen. And, after it has
happened, you are not to chatter about it before the servants or to your
companions. We are trusting you because you have almost come to the
years of discretion, and ought to have a notion how to behave under the
circumstances."

"Well, this is too bad of you, Annie!" cried Rose, showing instant
symptoms of revolt. "What have May and I done that we should be spoken
to as if we were a pair of tell-tales, or babies--and geese into the
bargain? Dora and you are not so much older, as you confess; neither are
you so much wiser with all your pretensions. If something of so much
consequence to everybody is on the eve of happening, I think we might
have been told before. Surely mother is not afraid that we should re