out them! Begin at the beginning. What do you consider your very
greatest trial?"

Lorna pondered. She is dark and slight, and wears her hair parted in
the middle, and puffed out at the sides in a quaint fashion that just
suits her style. She wrinkled her brows, and stared into space in a
rapt, melancholy fashion.

"I think," she said, slowly, at last, "I think it is the drawing-room!"

I was surprised, but still not surprised, for the drawing-room is awful!
Big and square, and filled with heavy furniture, and a perfect shopful
of ugly ornaments and bead mats, and little tables, and milking-stools,
and tambourines, and bannerettes, and all the kind of things that were
considered lovely ages ago, but which no self-respecting girl of our age
could possibly endure. Lorna told me thrilling tales of her experience
with that room.

"When I first came home, mother saw that I didn't like it, so she said
she knew quite well that she was old-fashioned and behind the times, and
now that she had a grown-up daughter she would leave the arrangement of
such things to her, and I could alter the room as much as ever I liked.
So, my dear, I made Mary bring the biggest tray in the house, and I
filled it three times over with gimcracks of all descriptions, and sent
them up to the box-room cupboard. I kept about three tables instead of
seven, with really nice things on them, and left a good sweep of floor
on which you could walk about without knocking things down. I pulled
out the piano from the wall, and lowered the pictures, and gathered all
the old china together, and put it on the chimney-piece, and--and--oh, I
can't tell you all the alterations, but you would hardly have known it
for the same room! It looked quite decent. When all was finished, I
sent for mother, and she came in and sat down, and, my dear, she turned
quite white! She kept looking round and round, searching for things
where she had been accustomed to find them, and she looked as if
something hurt her. I asked her if she didn't like it, and she said--

"`Oh, yes, it looks much more--more modern. Yes, dear, you have been
very clever. It is quite--smart! A little bare, isn't it--just a
little bare, don't you think?'

"`No, mother,' I said sternly, `not the least little bit in the world!
It seems so to you because you have had it so crowded that there was no
room to move, but you will soon get accustomed to the room as it is, and
like it far better.'