It was a beautiful summer's afternoon, and the girls were seated in a circle on the lawn in front of the house. The house was an old Elizabethan mansion, which had been added to from time to time-fresh additions jutting out here and running up there. There were all sorts of unexpected nooks and corners to be found in the old house-a flight of stairs just where you did not look for any, and a baize door shutting away the world at the moment when you expected to behold a long vista into space.