pany left, but I didn't say
a word. Thinks I, 'She's wiggles and chitters.' So I left her stay where
she was."

"But, mother!" Lulu cried. "You didn't even tell me after he'd gone."

"I forgot it," Mrs. Bett said, "finding Ninian's letter and all--" She
talked of Ninian's letter.

Di was bright and alert and firm of flesh and erect before Lulu's
softness and laxness.

"I don't know what your mother'll say," said Lulu, "and I don't know
what people'll think."

"They won't think Bobby and I are tired of each other, anyway," said Di,
and left the room.

Through the day Lulu tried to think what she must do. About Di she was
anxious and felt without power. She thought of the indignation of Dwight
and Ina that Di had not been more scrupulously guarded. She thought of
Di's girlish folly, her irritating independence--"and there," Lulu
thought, "just the other day I was teaching her to sew." Her mind dwelt
too on Dwight's furious anger at the opening of Ninian's letter. But
when all this had spent itself, what was she herself to do? She must
leave his house before he ordered her to do so, when she told him that
she had confided in Cornish, as tell she must. But what was she to _do_?
The bakery cake-making would not give her a roof.

Stepping about the kitchen in her blue cotton gown, her hair tight and
flat as seemed proper when one was not dressed, she thought about these
things. And it was strange: Lulu bore no physical appearance of one in
distress or any anxiety. Her head was erect, her movements were strong
and swift, her eyes were interested. She was no drooping Lulu with
dragging step. She was more intent, she was somehow more operative than
she had ever been.

Mrs. Bett was working contentedly beside her, and now and then humming
an air of that music of the night before. The sun surged through the
kitchen door and east window, a returned oriole swung and fluted on the
elm above the gable. Wagons clattered by over the rattling wooden block
pavement.

"Ain't it nice with nobody home?" Mrs. Bett remarked at intervals, like
the burden of a comic song.

"Hush, mother," Lulu said, troubled, her ethical refinements conflicting
with her honesty.

"Speak the truth and shame the devil," Mrs. Bett contended.

When dinner was ready at noon, Di did not appear. A little earlier Lulu
had heard her moving about her room, and she served her in expectation
that she would join them.

"Di must be having the 'tantrim' this