reading aloud.

No one seemed to be attending to anything else, when Dolores ventured
to cast a glance around and endeavour to count heads as she sat between
her uncle and aunt. Two boys and a girl were opposite. Harry, who had
come to meet them last night, was at one end of the table, a tall girl,
but still a schoolroom girl, was at the other, and Mysie had been lost
sights of on her own side of the table; also there was a very tiny girl
on a high chair on the other side of her mamma. 'Seven,' thought
Dolores with sinking heart. 'Eight oppressors!'

They were mostly brown-eyed, well-grown creatures. One boy, at the
further corner, had a cast in his eye, and was thin and wizen-looking,
and when he saw her eyes on him, he made up an ugly face, which he got
rid of like a flash of lightning before any one else could see it, but
her heart sank all the more for it. He must be Wilfred, the teaser.

Aunt Lilias was a tall, slender woman, dressed in some kind of soft
grey, with a little carnation colour at her throat, and a pretty lace
cap on her still rich, abundant, dark brown hair, where diligent search
could only detect a very few white threads. Her complexion was always
of a soft, paly, brunette tint, and though her cheeks showed signs that
she was not young, her dark, soft, long-lashed eyes and sweet-looking
lips made her face full of life and freshness; and the figure and long
slender hands had the kind of grace that some people call willowy, but
which is perhaps more like the general air of a young birch tree, or,
as Hal had once said, 'Early pointed architecture reminded him of his
mother.'

The little one was getting restless, and two of the boys began