ng Joanna overslept herself, in consequence of a restless
hour during the first part of the night. As a result, it had struck half
past seven before she went into her sister's room. She was not the kind
of person who knocks at doors, and burst in to find Ellen, inadequately
clothed in funny little garments, doing something very busily inside the
cupboard.

"Hullo, duckie! And how did you sleep in your lovely bed?"

She was once more aglow with the vitality and triumph of her own being,
but the next moment she experienced a vague sense of chill--something
was the matter with the room, something had happened to it. It had lost
its sense of cheerful riot, and wore a chastened, hangdog air. In a
spasm of consternation Joanna realized that Ellen had been tampering
with it.

"What have you done?--Where's my pictures?--Where've you put the window
curtains?" she cried at last.

Ellen stiffened herself and tried not to look guilty.

"I'm just trying to find room for my own things."

Joanna stared about her.

"Where's father's Buffalo certificate?"

"I've put it in the cupboard."

"In the cupboard!--father's ... and I'm blessed if you haven't taken
down the curtains."

"They clash with the carpet--it quite hurts me to look at them. Really,
Joanna, if this is my room, you oughtn't to mind what I do in it."

"Your room, indeed!--You've got some sass!--And I spending more'n forty
pound fixing it up for you. I've given you new wall paper and new carpet
and new curtains and all the best pictures, and took an unaccountable
lot of trouble, and now you go and mess it up."

"I haven't messed it up. On the contrary"--Ellen's vexation was breaking
through her sense of guilt--"I'm doing the best I can to make it look
decent. Since you say you've done it specially for me and spent all that
money on it, I think at least you might have consulted my taste a
little."

"And what is your taste, ma'am?"

"A bit quieter than yours," said Ellen saucily. "There are about six
different shades of red and pink in this room."

"And what shades would you have chosen, may I be so bold as to ask?"
Joanna's voice dragged ominously with patience--"the same shade as your
last night's gownd, which is the colour of the mould on jam? I'll have
the colours I like in my own house--I'm sick of your dentical, die-away
notions. You come home from school thinking you know everything, when
all you've learned is to despise my best pictures, and say my cu