re the rooms he'd
settled for them. Jane is a quiet little girl with a fringe and a white
pinafore, and Pehebe has a sash and cries about things, and Christopher
is a strong boy in socks."

"Stockings," Rupert said. "He's the oldest."

"He isn't. He's the baby. He wears socks. He's not so smooth as the
others, and look, poor Mr. Pinderwell hadn't time to put a full stop.
I'm glad I sleep in Jane."

"And of course you give me a girl who cries!" Miriam said. But the
characters of Mr. Pinderwell's children had been settled, and they were
never altered. Jane and Christopher and Phoebe were added to the
inhabitants whom Mildred Caniper did not see, but these three did not
leave the landing. They lived there quietly in the shadows, speaking
only in whispers, while Mr. Pinderwell continued his restless tramping
and his lady smiled, unwearied, in the drawing-room.

"He's the only one who can get at her and them," Helen said in pain. "I
don't know how their mother can bear it. I wonder if she'd mind if we
hung her on the landing, but then Mr. Pinderwell might miss her. He's so
used to her in the drawing-room, and perhaps she doesn't mind about the
children."

"I'm sure she doesn't," said John, for he thought she had a silly face.

This was when John and Rupert went to the Grammar School in the town,
while the girls did their lessons with Mildred Caniper in the schoolroom
of Pinderwell House. Enviously, they watched the boys step across the
moor each morning, but their stepmother could not be persuaded to allow
them to go too. The distance was so great, she said, and there was no
school for girls to which she would entrust them.

"The boys get all the fun," Miriam said. "They see the people in the
streets, and get a ride in Mrs. Brent's milk-cart nearly every day, and
we sit in the stuffy schoolroom, and Notya's cross."

"You make her cross on purpose," Helen said.

"She shouldn't let me," Miriam answered with perspicuity.

"But it's so silly to make ugliness. It's wicked. Do be good, and let's
try to enjoy the lessons and get them over."

But Miriam was not to be influenced by these wise counsels. During
lesson hours the strange antipathy between herself and Mildred Caniper
often blazed into a storm, and Helen, who loved to keep life smooth and
gracious, had the double mortification of seeing Miriam, whom she loved,
made naughtier, and Notya, whom she pitied, made more miserable.

"Oh, that we'd had an ignorant ste