ls,
including the sleeping room and bath adjoining.

"So now I'll ask you to keep off while I do what I please about the
library and the billiard room. I'll try to get along without much money
in doing what I desire there, but I must have some new clothes. I want
money to buy me a pair of new shoes for school. I want a pair of pumps
suitable for evenings when there are guests to dinner. I want a couple
of attractive school dresses. This old serge is getting too hot and too
worn for common decency. And I also want a couple of dresses something
like you are wearing, for afternoons and evenings."

Eileen stared aghast at Linda.

"Where," she inquired politely, "is the money for all this to come
from?"

"Eileen," said Linda in a low tense voice, "I have reached the place
where even the BOYS of the high school are twitting me about how I am
dressed, and that is the limit. I have stood it for three years from the
girls. I am an adept in pretending that I don't see, and I don't hear. I
have got to the point where I am perfectly capable of walking into your
wardrobe and taking out enough of the clothes there and selling them at
a second-hand store to buy me what I require to dress me just plainly
and decently. So take warning. I don't know where you are going to
get the money, but you are going to get it. If you would welcome a
suggestion from me, come home only half the times you dine yourself and
your girl friends at tearooms and cafes in the city, and you will save
my share that way. I am going to give you a chance to total your budget,
and then I demand one half of the income from Father's estate above
household expenses; and if I don't get it, on the day I am eighteen I
shall go to John Gilman and say to him what I have said to you, and I
shall go to the bank and demand that a division be made there, and that
a separate bank book be started for me."

Linda's amazement on entering the room had been worthy of note.
Eileen's at the present minute was beyond description. Dumbfounded was a
colorless word to describe her state of mind.

"You don't mean that," she gasped in a quivering voice when at last she
could speak.

"I can see, Eileen, that you are taken unawares," said Linda. "I have
had four long years to work up to this hour. Hasn't it even dawned on
you that this worm was ever going to turn? You know exquisite moths and
butterflies evolve in the canyons from very unprepossessing and lowly
living worms. You are