keep
your things in order you might as well not own them, for you never have
them when you want them anyway."

"And if you do keep them in order somebody else always borrows them and
then you don't have them when you want them either," said Sahwah.

"Life is awfully complicated, isn't it?" sighed Gladys.

"I should say it was awfully simple," said Sahwah, laughing at Gladys's
solemn tone. "No matter what you do it turns out the same way anyway. I
shouldn't call that complicated."

Gladys hung her handkerchiefs on the tent ropes where they would dry in
the wind and emptied the basin of water out of the end of the tent,
which opened directly on the bluff. A dismal shriek from below
proclaimed that somebody had received a shower bath. Gladys and Sahwah
leaned over the tent railing at a perilous angle and peered down. Half
way down the bluff, "between the devil and the deep sea," as Sahwah
remarked, sat Katherine on a narrow ledge of rock, dangling her feet
over the edge and leaning her head dejectedly on her hands. The
descending flood had landed on her head and was running in streams over
her face from the ends of her wispy hair, making her look more dejected
than ever. Her appearance made both the girls above think immediately of
Fifi on the occasion of his memorable bath.

"Oh, Katherine, I'm sorry," said Gladys contritely. "I ought to have
looked before I poured. But I never expected anybody to be sitting there
like a fly on the wall. What are you doing there anyway?"

"Just sitting," replied Katherine in her huskiest tones.

"What's the matter?" asked Gladys, catching the doleful note in her
voice and having inward qualms.

"Just low in my mind," replied Katherine lugubriously.

"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Gladys. "What about? Can't we come down
and cheer you up? Is there room for two more on that ledge?"

"Always plenty of room on the mourners' bench," said Katherine, moving
over.

"All right, we'll come," said Gladys. "How do you get down? Oh, I see,
there's a sort of path going down behind mother's tent. Look out, we're
coming."

Sahwah and Gladys crawled backward down the bluff, hanging on to the
grass and roots, and dropped to the ledge beside Katherine. They settled
themselves comfortably and swung their feet over the edge.

"Now, tell us your trouble," said Gladys, mopping Katherine's head with
her last clean handkerchief and getting it as wet as those up on the
tent ropes.

Katherine hunch