« Ruffles and Lace »

We look with amusement at the way young boys of a century ago were dressed in certain sectors of our society – velvet, ruffles and lace – not at all like the older males of their own times, more like the dress of our founding fathers more than a century before 1905. There was an acceptable dress distinction between the boy child and the boy, the boy and the man.

There seems to be a genuine affection between this boy and his older sister (I am not at all sure he was directed to put his hand under her arm); they are relaxed; their eyes smile. She wears rings on both hands, a necklace and a brooch I feel certain is a photo, not a painted portrait, of another young girl – perhaps her mother, sister, cousin or close friend.