How silly Deleah had looked when her white satin shoe had come off and shot across the slippery floor in the last waltz; and she would not stop, for all that, but finished the dance without it.
"A little, mama. They were a pair of Bessie's last year's ones, that were too small for her."
"There you go! At me again!" Bessie cried. "Deda is proud because her foot is smaller than mine, mama. If you're a little weed of a thing like Deda, of course your feet are narrow and small. They have to be. There's no merit in it."
"And I suppose Deleah danced her silk stockings into holes?"
"No, mama! Mr. Frost, I was waltzing with, held me up most beautifully; so that after the shoe came off my feet never once touched the floor."
"Lucky it wasn't you, Bessie! It would have been the finish of poor Frost to have tried to carry such a lump as you."
"Mama, will you speak to Bernard, and ask him not to be always saying rude things about me."
"Hush, Bessie! Nonsense! Bernard, my dear, do try to be more polite to your sister."
"Mama, here's a motter I rather like in this green cracker.
"'What I most admire in you Are your eyes of lovely blue.'
"What would you have done, Deleah, if a gentleman had pulled the cracker with you? Because your eyes aren't blue; they're yellow-brown."
"And why wouldn't you have passed it on to me, pray, miss. My eyes are as blue as Bernard's, I suppose?"
"Your eyes are green," from a Bernard ever ready for the fray.
"Mama! Mama! He's at me again! Bernard is at me again! He says my eyes are green!"
"Come, come, children! Hush, Bessie! You are too bad, Bernard. Now then, we have not yet decided who was the belle of the ball, last night."
It was while they gave their opinion on this momentous subject that Franky fell asleep over his cracker papers and was sent to bed, an hour before his time, his mother going up to hear him say his prayers, as was her nightly custom. She was crossing the hall on her return when the front door opened and the master of the house, to his wife's astonishment, reappearing, stepped in again.
"Lydia!" he whispered, and with an odd shrinking from him, she noticed that there was something furtive in his manner, and that his voice, wont to sound alarmingly through the house on his return to it, was husky and hushed. "Lydia, how much money have you in the house?"