You saw my sister Elsie in Rome--would you fear her ?" "Oh, no; she was so lovely and sweet!" "But not more so than our mother; they are wonderfully alike, only mamma is, of course, some years the older.

Yet I have often heard it remarked that she looks very little older than her eldest daughter." He talked a great deal to her of the different members of the Ion family, trying to make her acquainted with them all and their manner of life, which he described minutely.
The picture he drew of mutual love and helpfulness between parents and children, brothers and sisters, was a charming one to Zoe, who had had a lonely, motherless childhood.
"Ah, what a happy life is before me, Edward!" she said, "if only they will let me be one of them! But whether they will or no, I shall have you to love me! You will always be my husband and I your own little wife!" "Yes, darling, yes, indeed!" he answered, pressing the slight, girlish figure closer to his side..