t with its
deviced hat-band.

"Hullo, Joanna," she said.

"Hullo, dearie. I've just about been pining to get you back. How are
you?--how's your dancing?"--This as she bundled her up beside her in the
trap, while the porter helped old Stuppeny with her trunk.

"I can dance the waltz and the polka."

"That's fine--I've promised the folks around here that you shall show
'em what you can do."

She gave Ellen another warm, proud hug, and this time the child's
coolness melted a little. She rubbed her immaculate cheek against her
sister's sleeve--

"Good old Jo ..."

Thus they drove home at peace together.

The peace was shattered many times between that day and Christmas. Ellen
had forgotten what it was like to be slapped and what it was like to
receive big smacking kisses at odd encounters in yard or passage--she
resented both equally. "You're like an old bear, Jo--an awful old bear."
She had picked up at school a new vocabulary, of which the word "awful,"
used to express every quality of pleasure or pain, was a fair sample.
Joanna sometimes could not understand her--sometimes she understood too
well.

"I sent you to school to be made a little lady of, and here you come
back speaking worse than a National child."

"All the girls talk like that at school."

"Then seemingly it was a waste to send you there, since you could have
learned bad manners cheaper at home."

"But the mistresses don't allow it," said Ellen, in hasty fear of being
taken away, "you get a bad mark if you say 'damn.'"

"I should just about think you did, and I'd give you a good spanking
too. I never heard such language--no, not even at the Woolpack."

Ellen gave her peculiar, alien smile.

"You're awfully old-fashioned, Jo."

"Old-fashioned, am I, because I don't go against my Catechism and take
the Lord's name in vain?"

"Yes, you do--every time you say 'Lord sakes' you take the Lord's name
in vain, and it's common into the bargain."

Here Joanna lost her temper and boxed Ellen's ears.

"You dare say I'm common! So that's what you learn at school?--to come
home and call your sister common. Well, if I'm common, you're common
too, since we're the same blood."

"I never said you were common," sobbed Ellen--"and you really are a
beast, hitting me about. No wonder I like school better than home if
that's how you treat me."

Joanna declared with violence if that was how she felt she should never
see school again, whereupon Ellen scre