worth while to pay, a heavy rent for the
privilege of printing a fashionable address upon his cards.

Behind the silken curtains and _brise-bise_ of Number 14, the "Pampered
Pet" had her residence. At Number 1 the doctor's big family was so
crowded together that Betty was thankful to appropriate a front attic as
the only chance of possessing that luxury dear to every girlish
heart--"a bedroom to herself!" It was not a luxurious apartment, but it
was pretty, as every girl's bedroom may easily be, if she has the will
to make it so. The hemp carpet had long since faded to a nondescript
grey, but the pink-washed walls were hung with pictures and photographs,
and the owner's love of beauty and order showed itself in the
arrangement of the furniture, and the careful setting out of a few
treasured ornaments.

There was no gas in the room, so that Betty was obliged to do her simple
dressing for dinner by the aid of a candle, whose flickering beams
seemed intent on lighting every corner of the room, and leaving the
mirror in inky darkness. It was only within the last three months that
Dr Trevor had left his old-fashioned house in Bloomsbury, hoping that
the change of residence would help him in his ambition to extend his
practice among a better class of patients. The neighbourhood was new to
his family, and none of the residents of the Square had so far taken any
notice of their presence. Calling is not usual in London unless there
is some personal interest involved, and no doubt the occupants of more
aristocratic houses looked down with contempt on the sandwiched row of
shabby windows which belonged to them only on sufferance. If the
neighbours showed no interest in the doctor's family, the Trevors, on
the contrary, felt a devouring interest in everyone around them. They
had invented nicknames for all the residents in the northern row, of
which the schoolroom possessed the best view, before they had been a
week in their new quarters. A glance at the Directory in their father's
consulting-room would have solved the problem at once, but that was a
practical and commonplace method of procedure which made no appeal to
their imaginations. Nicknames were a thousand times better, because you
could manufacture them to suit!

The two old maiden ladies who lived in Number 15 were Emily and Hannah.
Emily was dressy, wore a false front, and always took precedence of her
sister, who was small and mousy in demeanour. It was appa