eep now."

"Oh, Martha, how soon you always do go to sleep! I'm not a bit sleepy
yet."

A snore from the other little bed soon showed Betty that further talk
was hopeless. She would have liked to chatter longer, but Martha had a
way of falling asleep at the most interesting points, and Betty knew it
would be useless to try and rouse her now.

So she resigned herself to her own thoughts with a sigh. Kitty was
coming to-morrow! Coming before Martha and she had had any enjoyment of
their country life together, for the children had only just left London.
Coming to spoil all their plans and games with her tiresome ways, just
as she had done last year. Of course she would insist on being first in
everything, on ruling everyone, and would be as pushing and disagreeable
as possible. It was all very well to say that she was a visitor and must
do as she wished, but that did not make it any the less provoking.

And then Martha took it all so quietly. It was almost impossible to
rouse her to be angry, and that was annoying too in its way. "I
suppose," thought Betty, very sleepily now, "that I ought to try to be
patient too, but sometimes I really _can't_." She fell asleep here, and
dreamed that Kitty was an immense "daddy-long-legs" flapping and buzzing
about in her hair.

The next afternoon Kitty arrived, full of excitement, and ready to be
more than delighted with everything.

She was eleven years old, just Martha's age, and Betty was two years
younger. Fresh from her life in London, where there always were so many
lessons to be learned and so little "fun" of any kind, this beautiful
country home was a sort of paradise to her. To have no one to scold her,
no lessons to learn, no tiresome straight walks with her governess, and
above all, to have two playfellows always ready to join in pleasures and
games! Kitty was an only child, and her life was often dull for want of
companionship. Everything went on very well at first, for there was so
much to do and see that there was no time for disputes. True, Kitty
commanded as much as ever, and had a way of setting people to rights
which was distinctly trying; but she and Betty did not come to any open
disagreement until she had been at Holmwood for nearly a week.
Nevertheless there had been many small occasions on which Betty had felt
fretted and irritated; for Kitty, without the least intending it, seemed
often to choose just the wrong thing to say and do.

And then she always wi