"It's an awful pity mamma isn't in a position to help us," said Eve.

Eve was the third. After her, Arthur had been[Pg 3] born; and then, all on a bright summer's morning, the triplets, Lee, Phyllis, and Gay.

[Pg 3]

"That old scalawag mamma married," said Lee, "spends all her money on his old hunting trips."

"Where is the princess at the moment?" asked Mr. Gilpin.

"They're in Somaliland," said Lee. "They almost took me. If they had, I shouldn't have called Oducalchi an old scalawag. You know the most dismal thing, when mamma and papa separated and she married him, was his turning out to be a regular old-fashioned brick. He can throw a fly yards further and lighter than any man I ever saw."

"And if you are bored," said Phyllis, "you say to him, 'Say something funny, Prince,' and he always can, instantly, without hesitation."

"All things considered," said Gay, "mamma's been a very lucky girl."

"Still," said Mary, "the fact remains that she's in no position to support us in the lap of luxury."

"Our kid brother," said Gay, "the future Prince Oducalchi, will need all she's got. When you realize that that child will have something like fifty acres of slate roofs to keep in order, it sets you thinking."

[Pg 4]

[Pg 4]

"One thing I insist on," said Maud, "mamma shan't be bothered by a lot of hard-luck stories——"

"Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Gilpin," said Arthur, in his gentle voice, "that my sisters are the six sandiest and most beautiful girls in the world? I've been watching them out of the corner of my eye, and wishing to heaven that I were Romney or Gainsborough. I'd give a million dollars, if I had them, for their six profiles, immortally painted in a row. But nowadays if a boy has the impulse to be a painter, he is given a camera; or if he wishes to be a musician, he is presented with a pianola. Luxury is the executioner of art. Personally I am so glad that I am going to be poor that I don't know what to do."

"Aren't you sorry for us, Artie?" 

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