The Palace Beautiful

unceasingly correcting tone, was felt just at first to be unendurable. She was sincerely fond of the girls, whom she had taught to play incorrectly, and to read French with an accent unrecognized in Paris, but Miss Martineau was a worry, was a great deal too officious, and so the girls shut themselves away from her and from all other neighbors for the first month after their mother's death.

CHAPTER III

.

MISS MARTINEAU.

Primrose was the soul of hospitality; having decided that Miss Martineau was to be admitted that evening, it occurred to her that she might as well make things pleasant for this angular, good-humored, and somewhat hungry personage. Primrose could cook charmingly, and when dinner was over she turned to her sisters, and said in her usual rather slow way--

"I am going to make some cream-cakes for tea; and Jasmine, dear, you might put some fresh flowers in the vases; and Daisy--"; she paused as she looked at her sister--the child's blue eyes were fi