'Well,' asked Miss Amabel, as, after a great deal of bustle and talk in the hall, the sisters came back to the drawing-room, 'and what are your impressions of the kids?'
'Poor little mites!' said Miss Sibyl; 'they seem so very white and sickly in appearance, that we were quite astonished at the way they scampered upstairs. I am thankful they were sent back in charge of an English nurse. Those ayahs are always so unsatisfactory.'
Before many days the children astonished their aunts still more by their agility and ingenuity in mischief of all sorts. Roland, a fair, curly-haired little fellow of seven, led his smaller sister Olive into every kind of audacious escapade. Their spirits were unflagging, though at times their frail-looking little bodies seemed to droop under their activity.
Miss Hunter came upon little Olive one afternoon sitting on the stairs in a breathless, exhausted state, and Roland was remonstrating with her. [Pg 10]
'You've only run up twenty-five times, Olive, and you're tired already; it's a mile race, and you must go on.'
'She must do nothing of the sort, Roland,' said Miss Hunter sternly. 'I will not let you tear up and down stairs all day in this fashion. What do you mean by it?'
'We can't be idle, auntie,' said Roland, shaking his curls back, and speaking with decision. 'Nurse has the toothache, and won't take us out. Father says people can be idle very easily, and put it down to the climate, and "idle hands find mischief," he says, and father is never idle. If we don't run up and down stairs, where can we run? We like the stairs best, because we never have stairs in India.'
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