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 and surrounding a ramshackle wooden house, with an overflow of outbuildings, all stained, rather than painted, with a various, weather-washed red.

“Nancy’s flowers!” says Mother, stooping to smell a bit of lemon verbena, and to lift up a branch of fuchsia, all bowed down beneath its load of royal purple and crimson. “That child would grow flowers in a dust-pan, I do believe—Ah, Nance, here you are!” as another girl comes flying out of the house—they all seem to take after their father as to movement, and carry the wind in their hair.

Nance is slighter than Flo, and fairer; perhaps she is a couple of years older. Her pale-green blouse is faded but spotless; and the untrimmed “gégé” hat tilted back upon her head frames in a face that is very nearly pretty, and so happy that it has the effect of being pretty quite; and that is a real triumph of mind over matter, since one cheek is red and swollen, and Nance’s hand goes up to it, even as she smiles a charming welcome.

“Toothache?” asks mother, sympathetically.

Nancy nods. “But it’ll go,” she says brightly. “Come along in! The kettle’s on the boil.”

“None of ’em really strong, someway,” Mother confides to me. “But they all take after their dad—they won’t give in till they must.”

The house door leads right into a large bare room, with a long table and some benches in it, all polished by much use, and a great open hearth, fit for burning huge logs of wood. The brown wood walls, guiltless of paint or paper, are decorated only with a couple of Christmas Supplement pictures, unframed; the floor is covered with a brown linoleum which lost