What is happiness ?" He glanced with half a smile, in spite of his gloomy irritation, at his sister.

She looked, as usual, as if she were weighing one thing with another, and balancing them together before she made up her mind.
"Happiness," she remarked at length enigmatically, rather as if she were sampling the word, and then she paused.

She paused for a considerable space, as if she were considering happiness in all its bearings.

"Hilda was here to-day," she suddenly resumed, as if they had never mentioned happiness.

"She brought Bobbie--he's a fine boy now." Ralph observed, with an amusement that had a tinge of irony in it, that she was now going to sidle away quickly from this dangerous approach to intimacy on to topics of general and family interest.