ace with a bright, eager expression, needed no second bidding.
She was off almost before Elsa had finished speaking.

"What a good child she is!" said Frances. "What a clever, nice boy she
would have made! And if Geoff had been a girl, perhaps he would have
been more easily managed."

"I don't know," said Elsa. "Perhaps if Vicky had been a boy she would
have been spoilt and selfish too."

"Elsa," said Frances, "I think you are rather hard upon Geoff. He is
like all boys. Everybody says they are more selfish than girls, and then
they grow out of it."

"They grow out of showing it so plainly, perhaps," replied Elsa, rather
bitterly. "But you contradict yourself, Frances. Just a moment ago you
said what a much nicer boy Vic would have made. All boys aren't like
Geoff. Of course, I don't mean that he is really a bad boy; but it just
comes over me now and then that it is a _shame_ he should be such a
tease and worry, boy or not. When mamma is anxious, and with good
reason, and we girls are doing all we can, why should Geoff be the one
we have to keep away from her, and to smooth down, as it were? It's all
for her sake, of course; but it makes me ashamed, all the same, to feel
that we are really almost afraid of him. There now----" And she started
up as the sound of a door, slammed violently in the lower regions,
reached her ears.

But before she had time to cross the room, Vicky reappeared.

"It's nothing, Elsa," the child began eagerly. "Geoff's all right; he's
not cross. He only slammed the door at the top of the kitchen stair
because I reminded him not to leave it open."

"You might have shut it yourself, rather than risk a noise to-night,"
said Elsa. "What was he doing at the top of the kitchen stair?"

Vicky looked rather guilty.

"He was calling to Phoebe to boil two eggs for his tea. He says he is so
hungry. I would have run up to tell you; but I thought it was better
than his teasing mamma about letting him come in to dinner."

Elsa glanced at Frances.

"You see," her glance seemed to say.

"Yes, dear," she said aloud to the little sister, "anything is better
than that. Run down again, Vicky, and keep him as quiet as you can."

"Would it not be better, perhaps," asked Frances, rather timidly, "for
one of us to go and speak to him, and tell him quietly about mamma
having had bad news?"

"He wouldn't rest then till he had heard all about it from herself,"
said Elsa. "Of course he'd be sorry for her, an