have
played so if she hadn't known trouble and tragedy, too, perhaps. Oh,
dear, it's very comforting when one is rather in low spirits and things
have gone wrong, but it doesn't look half so attractive when there's fun
ahead."

She shook her head and then laughed her rippling laugh at herself. "I'm
getting too deep," she warned herself. "I've got to stay where I can
touch bottom. Constance may go far ahead, but I've got to go slow or
I'll be getting silly again on the other side."

She kept to this wise decision and whenever she found herself beginning
to pose as a being enlightened through suffering she made a face at
herself in the quaint mirror and ran away to do something "plain and
practical" for someone.

And so the days sped and Judith came back from Rockham full of news and
wondering greatly at the change in her dear Miss Pat.

"You're awfully meek now, aren't you?" she asked her suddenly, after
Judith's little trunk had been unpacked and the things stowed in the
most convenient drawers. "You used to be nice, but you didn't give up to
younger persons like you do now."

Patricia started to say that she had learned a great lesson, but she
caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and she said instead that she
was treating Judith as a guest now, and so she had to be polite.

Judith was only half convinced. She had not been studying people's faces
and searching for meanings in their expressions all these months for
nothing. The tales about Rockham alone would have sharpened her to that
extent.

"You're different," she said positively. "And I don't know whether I
like you better or not. You seem too good to be true, somehow."

Patricia's derisive laughter only made her more emphatic. "You aren't
half so gay as you were, and you practice as though you were doing a
lesson instead of because you couldn't help it, like you used to," she
declared. "You're nice to that gorgeous Rosamond Merton and you let her
wipe her feet on you every time you go in there. I've seen how meek you
are. If it wasn't you," she said with a pucker in her brow, "I'd think
you were up to something. Why don't you sing like you used to?"

Patricia said that she had been at a song, but it was not to be known,
and she made Judith promise not to tell Constance or anyone else at home
before she would sit down at the shining piano Bruce had got a musical
friend to select for her, and sang the song through to its end.

Judith still looked pu