Sisters | Page 2

to put a folded tablecloth into
the old wardrobe that did for a sideboard, under the stairs. Cherry,
descending to earth, smiled at him, and crossed the hall to the
sitting-room door.
An older woman might have gone upstairs, to dream alone of her new
joy, but Cherry thought that it would be "fun" to join the family, and
"act as if nothing had happened!" She was only a child, after all.
Consciously or unconsciously, they had all tried to keep her a child,
these three who looked up to smile at her as she came in. One of them,
rosy, gray-headed, magnificent at sixty, was her father, whose favourite
she knew she was. He held out his hand to her without closing the book
that was in the other hand, and drew her to the wide arm of his chair,
where she settled herself with her soft young body resting against him,
her slim ankles crossed, and her cheek dropped against his thick silver
hair.
Alix was reading, and dreamily scratching her ankle as she read; she
was a tall, awkward girl, younger far at twenty-one than Cherry was at
eighteen, pretty in a gipsyish way, untidy as to hair, with round black
eyes, high, thin cheek-bones marked with scarlet, and a wide,
humorous mouth that was somehow droll in its expression even when
she was angry or serious. She was rarely angry; she was unexacting,
good-humoured, preferring animals to people, and unconventional in
speech and manner. Her father and Anne sometimes discussed her
anxiously; they confessed that they were rather fearful for Alix. For
Cherry, neither one had ever had a disquieting thought.
Anne, smiling demurely over her white sewing, was a small,
prettily-made little woman, with silky hair trimly braided, and a rather
pale, small face with charming and regular features. She was not
considered exactly pretty; perhaps the contrast with Cherry's unusual
beauty was rather hard on both the older girls; but she was so perfectly
capable in her little groove, so busy, contented, and necessary in the
doctor's household, that it was rather a habit with all their friends to
praise Anne. Anne had "admirers," too, Cherry reflected, looking at her
to-night, but neither she nor Alix had ever been

engaged--engaged--engaged!
"Aren't you home early?" said Doctor Strickland, rubbing his cheek
against his youngest daughter's cheek in sleepy content. He was never
quite happy unless all three girls were in his sight, but for this girl he
had always felt an especial protecting fondness. It seemed only
yesterday that Cherry, a rosy-cheeked sturdy little girl in a checked
gingham apron, had been trotting off to school; to him it was yesterday
that she had been a squarely-built baby, digging in the garden paths,
and sniffing at the border pinks. He had followed her exquisite
childhood with more than a father's usual devotion, perhaps because
she really had been an exceptionally endearing child, perhaps because
she had been given him, a tiny crying thing in a blanket, to fill the great
gap her mother's going had left in his heart. He had sympathized with
her microscopic cut fingers, he had smiled into her glowing, damp little
face when she stuttered to him long tales of bad doggies and big 'ticks;
he had brought her "jacks" and paper-dolls and hair ribbons; he loved
the diminutive femininity of the creature; she was all a woman, even at
three. Alix he proudly called his "boy"; Alix used hair ribbons to tie up
her dogs, and demanded hip boots and an air rifle and got them, too,
and used them, but when he took Alix in his arms she was apt to bump
his nose violently with her hard young head, to break his glasses, or at
best to wriggle herself free. Little Cherry, however, was 'fraid of dogs,
she told her father, and of guns, and she would curl up in his arms for
happy half-hours, with her gold curls sprayed against his shoulder, and
her soft little hand tucked into his own.
"Mr. Lloyd had to take the nine o'clock train," Cherry answered her
father dreamily, "and he and Peter walked home with me!" She did not
add that Peter had left them at his own turning, a quarter of a mile
away.
"I thought he wasn't going to be at Mrs. North's for dinner," Anne
observed quietly, in the silence. She had been informally asked to the
Norths' for dinner that evening herself, and had declined for no other
reason than that attractive Martin Lloyd was presumably not to be
there.

"He wasn't," Cherry said. "He thought he had to go to town at six. I just
stopped in to give them Dad's message, and they teased me to stay. You
knew where I was, didn't you--Dad?" she murmured.