The old man nodded. “All right, Tommy. I don’t believe you be, nuther, but you may jest as well git it through your head what’s goin’ to happen if you do.”      

       “Ain’t goin’ to,” returned the boy. He whistled charmingly as he raked the leaves. His whistle sounded like the carol of a bird.     

       Eudora pushed the carriage around to the side door, and immediately there was a fluttering rush of a slender woman clad in lavender down the steps. This woman first kissed Eudora with gentle fervor, then, with a sly look around and voice raised intentionally high, she lifted the blue and white roll from the carriage with the tenderest care. “Did the darling come to see his aunties?” she shrilled.     

       The old man and the boy in the front yard heard her distinctly. The old man’s face was imperturbable. The boy grinned.     

       Two other women, all clad in lavender, appeared in the doorway. They also bent over the blue and white bundle. They also said something about the darling coming to see his aunties. Then there ensued the softest chorus of lady-laughter, as if at some hidden joke.     

       “Come in, Eudora dear,” said Amelia Lancaster. “Yes, come in, Eudora dear,” said Anna Lancaster. “Yes, come in, Eudora dear,” said Sophia Willing.     

       Sophia looked much older than her sisters, but with that exception the resemblance between all three was startling. They always dressed exactly alike, too, in silken fabric of bluish lavender, like myrtle blossoms. Some of the poetical souls in the village called the Lancaster sisters       “The ladies in lavender.”      

       There was an astonishing change in the treatment of the blue and white       bundle when the sisters and Eudora were in the stately old sitting-room, with its heavy mahogany furniture and its white-wainscoted calls. Amelia simply tossed the bundle into a corner of the sofa; then the sisters all sat in a loving circle around Eudora.     

       “Are you sure you are not utterly worn out, dear?” asked Amelia, tenderly; and the others repeated the question in exactly the same tone. The Lancaster sisters were not pretty, but all had charming expressions of gentleness and a dignified good-will and loving kindness. Their blue eyes beamed love at Eudora, and it was as if she sat 

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