And So It Begins...

I am at just over 1,000 words, and am calling it for tonight... will come back to the story tomorrow. Here is the beginning of my novel, it introduces the three characters: Grace, the eldest, Hope, the middle, and Prudence, the youngest. I am writing about them as adults but introduced them as children first.
Here it is:
"Three little girls, all in a row. They lay side by side in the bed that last year might have been big enough for the three of them. At bedtime there was giggling, and arguing, and pushing, and fighting. But now, deep asleep, they are still. Three little girls, with long, dark hair, curling just a bit at the ends, slightly damp, from sweat, or from a bath, we can’t tell. They lie so close to each other, their hair is intertwined. Three little girls, all sweet breath and soft sighs, and velvety flannel nightgowns, worn thin with use. They lie out of order, with the littlest in the middle, because she is the youngest she gets the least preferred place. No space to stick a long leg out to catch the fresh air, shuttered in by her two older sisters. Laying on her side, she clutches a lock of her hair (hers or her sister’s, we can’t tell), her thumb in her mouth. She’ll wreck her teeth, (got to stop her from doing that, got to stop her, Frank, it’s gotta stop). The baby still has the round cheeks of young childhood, and if she were awake we’d see her dimples and her sweet, happy smile.
The middle child lies on the left, a frown creasing her brow. Is it a bad dream? Or is it her usual expression? A bad dream we’ll say. She faces the baby sister, all long lashes and freckles, her nightgown short on legs that seem to have grown a foot since last summer. As she sleeps she lays her arm protectively across her younger sister, when in wakefulness she would have shoved her away.
The oldest lies on the right, her arm tucked under her head, her face in her sister’s long hair. In order to not fall out of the bed, she has to hold her young sister close. Her expression, even in sleep is serious, the responsibility of being the eldest etched in her features, a part of her. Three little girls in three short years. There is not much space between the oldest and the youngest. In grown up years the difference is nothing, but in child years, it is everything. And these patterns, once established, will never change."