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And as there's somethin' familiar about the voice I takes a peek over my shoulder. But neither the braid-bound cutaway fittin' so snug at the waist, nor the snappy fall derby snuggled down over the lop ears, suggested any old friends. Not until he swings around and I gets a view of that nosy profile do I gasp any gasps. "Sizzlin' Stepsisters!" says I. "If it ain't Skeet Keyser!"

She was hardly sorry, she was certainly not glad; she envied the spontaneous tears of her stepsisters, and she found the lugubriousness of the occasion much alleviated by the presence of her stepbrother Reginald. She had hardly seen him since her childhood. Sophia always spoke of him as she might have spoken of the dead.

Her stepsisters, devoted to the little girl, and perhaps not altogether sorry to be rid of a stepmother younger than themselves, had tried to make up for that loss, but they were much occupied with the social activities of Radstowe and they belonged to an otherwise inactive generation, so that if Rose had a grievance it was that they never played games with her, never ran, or played ball or bowled hoops as she saw the mothers of other children doing.

She was conscious even then that Mabel and Ethel, the stepsisters, were as nothing in comparison to herself in her mother's regard. She had a certainty that her mother had loved her own father very much the young, brilliant, spendthrift, last La Sarthe. And her mother had been of the family, too a distant cousin.

Marriage opened the only door, but not marriage with Francis Sales, not marriage with anyone she knew in Radstowe, and her stepsisters had no inclination to leave the home of their youth, the scene of their past successes, for her sake.

Caroline and Sophia faced the horses and Rose sat opposite her stepsisters, but now she did not listen to their talk with ears stretched, not to miss a word, and she did not think her companions as beautiful as princesses. It was she who might have been a princess for another child, but she did not think of that. She looked with amusement and with misplaced pity at the other two.

She had been very proud of her stepsisters as she sat facing them and she had decided to wear just such muslin dresses, just such hats, when she grew up. Caroline was in pink with coral beads and a pink feather drooping on her dark hair; and Sophia, very fair, with a freckle here and there peeping, as though curious, through the powder, wore yellow with a big-bowed sash.

Yet she liked him, she had always liked him since, as a little girl, she had been taken by her stepsisters to a haymaking party at Sales Hall.

Sally was walking between her two stepsisters, but what a different Sally! She wore a neat, pretty dress that had belonged to Betsy. She had on Sarah's shawl. Her hair was combed in two neat pigtails. Her face had a clean, scrubbed look. Her eyes were sparkling. She was taking Betsy and Mathilda to call on one of the neighbors. "Good-by, Mamma," she called.

Rose wished she could give the difficult things love, devotion, and self-sacrifice; but she could not, or perhaps she had no opportunity. She was fond of her stepsisters, but her most conscious affection was the one she felt for her horse. She left him at the stable and, fastening up her riding-skirt, she walked slowly home. She had not far to go.