as
handed to her, "Is that all?"

More than once in her reports to Lila, Bea declared that it was about
time for a wave of reform in the vicinity of Ethelwynne Bruce. Perhaps
she might even have contemplated the possibility of engineering something
of the kind herself, if she had not been too busy to spare the necessary
thought-energy. In the course of events, fate with its machinery of
circumstances added an extra lesson to Ethelwynne's college course.

It happened one evening during the skating season.

Ethelwynne with her skates jingling over her arm came shivering into the
room. "Oo-oo-ooh!" Her teeth chattered. "Wynnie's freezing. Do shut that
window and turn on the heat, Agnes. It is hard lines to live in a double
with a regular Polar bear direct from the land of Sparta. You ought to
keep it up as high as forty degrees anyhow."

"Sh-h!" The smooth dark head at the desk bent lower over the water-color
before her. "Don't interrupt this minute. There's a dear. I've got to
catch this last streak of daylight----"

"But it isn't daylight," fretted Ethelwynne, "the moon's up already. And
I'm so chilly! I wish you would help me make some hot chocolate."

"Look at the thermometer. Ah, one more stroke of that exquisite saffron
on the stem! Hush, now. Look at the thermometer, look at the
thermometer," she muttered abstractedly while concentrating all her
mental attention in the tips of her skilful fingers.

Ethelwynne stared at her a moment before giving a little chuckle that
ended in a shiver. "Look at the thermometer, look at the thermometer,"
she echoed sarcastically, "I reckon that'll warm me up, won't it? Like
somebody or other who set a lighted candle inside the fireless stove and
then warmed himself at the glowing isinglass. Suppose your old
thermometer does say seventy or eighty or ninety or a hundred? Maybe it
is telling a story. Why should I trust an uneducated instrument that has
never studied ethics? Now listen here!" She lifted her skates and poised
them to throw from high above her head. "Hist! if you don't drop those
hideous toadstools of yours and begin to sympathize with me this instant,
I shall hur-r-rl this clanking steel----"

Agnes still painting busily raised one elbow in an attitude of
half-unconscious defense.

"----upon the floor-r-r!"

At the crashing rattlety-bang Agnes sprang to her feet with a nervous
shriek. Ethelwynne dived for her skates and felt them carefully. "I tried
to pick ou