Four Girls of Forty Years Ago by Nina Rhoades

They all lived in the big front room on the top floor of Grandpa Winslow's old-fashioned house near Washington Square. They had lived there for so long that Molly and Maud -- who were only nine and seven -- could not remember ever having lived anywhere else. But Dulcie -- who was nearly twelve -- and Daisy -- who was ten and a half -- had dim memories of a very different home -- a home that was always bright and happy, and in which the grim figures of Grandma Winslow and her daughter, Aunt Kate, played no part.

It was more than five years since their father had brought his four little motherless girls from the Western town where they were born, to the stately, gloomy old house near Washington Square. It had seemed to Mr. Winslow the wisest thing to do, for he was young and inexperienced, and the death of his pretty young wife had almost broken his heart. With the exception of his father, who was very old and infirm, and his stepmother, whom he had never loved very much, he had no near relatives, and so when his father had written in his trembling old hand, offering a home to him and his four little girls, he had accepted the offer, and they had left the Western home, where they had been so happy, and taken the long journey to New York, accompanied by Lizzie, the faithful servant, who had formerly been maid-of-all-work, but now acted as the children's nurse.