n, like other girls!"

Hugh looked troubled.

"It's a wonder Laura didn't think you might--"

"Laura didn't think anything about it! She just saw it was about a
poet, and so the very thing for me!"

"Maybe Alene would--"

"Yes, I know she'd give it up if she knew I wanted it! She's an
unselfish little thing. She took it because it was all that was left
when Laura disposed of the 'soulful poet' part," Ivy said. Then after
a silence, "I wonder why bad health makes me cranky and selfish and
envious, instead of patient and meek, like the little girls in story
books!"

Hugh smiled. He couldn't imagine his sprightly sister in the story
book role of uncomplaining heroine, and he wouldn't wish to have her
so, not for the world. Ivy was Ivy with all her faults; he wouldn't
wish to have her otherwise except a happier Ivy, with the blessing of
health and strength, flitting gaily through life, having part in the
work and the play of the world.

CHAPTER VI

A SCORNFUL BEAUTY

Ivy could not have complained of Alene's want of animation had she
followed her home after rehearsal one afternoon a few days later.

She entered the library, threw her hat on a chair and herself upon a
snug little sofa that stood invitingly in the embrasure of a window,
which, by drawing the crimson curtains, could be shut off from the rest
of the room, leaving a cosy den--her favorite place for dreaming and
reading, where her eyes, straying from her book, rested on an
ever-varying picture of sky and river, which the window framed.

To-day, not waiting to shut herself away, and paying no attention to
the smiling landscape, she opened a sheet of foolscap paper that she
had held clasped tightly in her hand, and gravely perused the lines of
Ivy's angular writing which covered it. A similar sheet had been given
to the other actors in the dialogue so that each might learn his part
at leisure.

"'I ask for beauty--' yes, you little numskull, ask for it,--that's all
people think you're good for! Laura, of course, never thought of it
that way but others will! And I don't wish for it, I'd rather be a
poet any day!

'I ask the poet's gift, the lyre,
With skillful hand to sweep each wire,
I'd pour my burning thoughts in song,
In lays deep, passionate and strong,
Till heart should thrill at every word
As mind is thrilled at song of bird!
Oh, I would die and leave some trace
That earth had been my dwelling place,
Would