“Papa,” said Ethel, “will you lend me a pair of spectacles for the walk?”
“And make yourself one, Ethel,” said Flora.
“It is very bad for you, Ethel,” further added her mother; “you will make your sight much shorter if you accustom your eyes to them.”
“Well, mamma, I never do wear them about the house.”
“For a very good reason,” said Margaret; “because you haven’t got them.”
“No, I believe Harry stole them in the holidays.”
“Stole them!” said the doctor; “as if they weren’t my property, unjustifiably appropriated by her!”
“They were that pair that you never could keep on, papa,” said Ethel--“no use at all to you. Come, do lend me them.”
“I’m sure I shan’t let you wear them,” said Harry. “I shan’t go, if you choose to make yourself such an object.”
“Ah!” said the father, “the boys thought it time to put a stop to it when it came to a caricature of the little doctor in petticoats.”
“Yes, in Norman’s Lexicon,” said Ethel, “a capital likeness of you, papa; but I never could get him to tell me who drew it.”
Nor did Ethel know that that caricature had been the cause of the black eye that Harry had brought home last summer. Harry returned, to protest that he would not join the walk, if she chose to be seen in the spectacles, while she undauntedly continued her petition, though answered that she would attract the attacks of the quarrymen, who would take her for an attenuated owl.
“I wish you were obliged to go about without them yourself, papa!” cried Ethel, “and then you would know how tiresome it is not to see twice the length of your own nose.”
“Not such a very short allowance either,” said the doctor quaintly, and therewith the dinner concluded. There was apt to be a race between the two eldest girls for the honour of bringing down the baby; but this time their father strode up three steps at once, turned at the top of the first flight, made his bow to them, and presently came down with his little daughter in his arms, nodded triumphantly at the sisters, and set her down on her mother’s lap.
“There, Maggie, you are complete, you old hen-and-chicken daisy. Can’t you take her portrait in the character, Margaret?”
“With her pink cap, and Blanche and Aubrey as they are now, on each side?” said Flora.