e mistress?"

"Mrs. Haddo," said Miss Symes in a tone of great respect.

"Well, whatever her name is, she said we were to be restricted by no
rules to-day. She said so, didn't she, Sylvia? Didn't she, Hetty?"

"She certainly did," replied the twins.

"Then, if it's a rule for the trunks to be unpacked by some one else, it
doesn't apply to us to-day," said Betty. "If you will be so very kind,
Miss----"

"Symes is my name."

"So very kind, Miss Symes, as to go away and leave us, we'll begin to
unpack our own trunks and put everything away by dinner-time."

"Very well," said Miss Symes quite meekly. "Is there anything else I can
do for your comfort?"

"Yes," remarked Sylvia in a pert tone; "you can go away."

Miss Symes left the room. When she did so the two younger girls looked
at their elder sister. Betty's face was very white, and her chest was
working ominously.

Sylvia went up to her and gave her a sudden, violent slap between the
shoulders. "Now, don't begin!" she said. "If you do, they'll all come
round us. It isn't as if we could rush away to the middle of the moors,
and you could go on with it as long as you liked. Here, if you howl,
you'll catch it; for they'll stand over you, and perhaps fling water on
your head."

"Leave me alone, then, for a minute," said Betty. She flung herself flat
on the ground, face downwards, her hair falling about her shoulders. She
lay as still as though she were carved in stone. The twin girls watched
her for a minute. Then very softly and carefully Sylvia approached the
prone figure, pushed her hand into Betty's pocket (a very coarse,
ordinary pocket it was, put in at the side of her dress by Jean's own
fingers), and took out a bunch of keys.

Sylvia held up the keys with a glad smile. "Now let's begin," she said.
"It's an odious, grandified room, and Betty'll go mad here; but we can't
help it--at least, for a bit. And there's always the packet."

At these words, to the great relief of her younger sisters, Betty stood
upright. "There's always the packet," she said. "Now let's begin to
unpack."

Notwithstanding the fact that there were six deal trunks--six trunks of
the plainest make, corded with the coarsest rope--there was very little
inside them, at least as far as an ordinary girl's wardrobe is
concerned; for Miss Frances Vivian had been very poor, and during the
last year of her life had lived at Craigie Muir in the strictest
economy. She was, moreover, too ill