k,"
and having turned bitterly against all the girls, merely because of the
unconscious smile on Ernestine's astonished face, Olive crushed all the
joy from her own face, and nearly all from her heart.

CHAPTER V.

ONE DAY.

"Well, surely there never was such a pokey family," exclaimed Ernestine,
lounging into the room where the girls were gathered, one bleak dreary
morning, early in November. "Nothing ever happens, any more than as if
we were in back-woods. Kittie, I'll change seats with you."

"I suppose you will," returned Kittie, keeping her chair and frowning
over her slate and book. "You'll always change if you get the best by
it; get out of my light will you."

"I wish you'd shut the door, Ernestine," growled Kat over the top of a
bandage bound round her head and face; "I wish your tooth was ready to
jump out of your mouth, and some one would leave the door open on you."

"I'd try and set you a good example, by being polite at least," laughed
Ernestine, who really never could be cross or blue, very long at a time.
"How grum we are; what's the matter Bea?"

"I've an awful headache," answered Bea, who shared in the general
depression, and was considerably ruffled over not being able to set a
puff straight on her skirt. "Be quiet, please, and sit down; it was
still enough before you came in."

"So I should think, from the way you all look like tomb-stones. Nobody
looks peaceful, but Jean, and she's asleep; and Olive is the only one
that looks natural, because she always looks solemn and cross, no matter
what's up."

Olive turned from the window with a jerk. She had such a cold, that she
could not go down to the store, and her face was swollen most
unbecomingly.

"Perhaps if you had a little more sense, you might be able to look at
least reasonably solemn sometimes," she said sharply.

"Oh, mercy," cried Ernestine, with her gay laugh, far more tantalizing
than the sharpest words. "If having sense would make me look like you,
I'd never want it,--never."

Olive jumped from her seat with a force that knocked the chair over, and
startled the whole company.

"Ernestine Dering," she cried fiercely, and as though the words almost
choked her. "You are the most heartless, selfish, senseless creature,
that ever lived; I never will forgive you! You haven't got a thought
above looking like a wax doll, and acting like a ninny, and I hate
you;--there!"

"Well--if--I--ever," cried Kittie, as Olive vanishe