conformity with the fashion, which at that time would have demanded that four feminine circumferences should fill all the free space in the front parlour. All four, if they had been wax-work, might have been packed easily in a fashionable lady's travelling trunk. Their faces seemed full of speech, as if their minds had been shelled, after the manner of horse-chestnuts, and become brightly visible. The only large thing of its kind in the room was Hafiz, the Persian cat, comfortably poised on the brown leather back of a chair, and opening his large eyes now and then to see that the lower animals were not in any mischief.
The book Mrs Meyrick had before her was Erckmann-Chatrian's Histoire d'un Conscrit. She had just finished reading it aloud, and Mab, who had let her work fall on the ground while she stretched her head forward and fixed her eyes on the reader, exclaimed—
"I think that is the finest story in the world."
"Of course, Mab!" said Amy, "it is the last you have heard. Everything that pleases you is the best in its turn."
"It is hardly to be called a story," said Kate. "It is a bit of history brought near us with a strong telescope. We can see the soldier's faces:
