ot yet seen. Now that it had
come, Ephie was not sure whether she liked it or not; and all the cries
of admiration her mother and Mrs. Tully uttered, when she put it on,
were necessary to reassure her. Johanna was silent, and this unspoken
disapproval irritated Ephie.

"Why don't you say something, Joan?" she cried crossly. "I suppose you
think it's homely?"

"Frankly, I don't care for it much, dear. To my mind, it's overtrimmed."

This was so precisely Ephie's own feeling that she was more annoyed
than ever; she taunted Johanna with old-fashioned, countrified tastes;
and, in spite of her mother's comforting assurances, retired in a pet
to her own room.

That afternoon, as they sat together at tea, Mrs. Cayhill, who for some
time had considered Ephie fondly, said: "I can't understand you
thinking she isn't well, Joan. I never saw her look better."

Ephie went crimson. "Now what has Joan been saying about me?" she asked
angrily.

Johanna had left the table, and was reading on the sofa.

"I only said what I repeated to yourself, Ephie. That I didn't think
you were looking well."

"Just fancy," said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing good-humouredly, "she was
saying we ought to leave Leipzig and go to some strange place. Even
back home to America. You don't want to go away, darling, do you?"

"No, really, Joan is too bad," cried Ephie, with a voice in which tears
and exasperation struggled for the mastery. "She always has some new
fad in her head. She can't leave us alone--never! Let her go away, so
she wants to. I won't. I'm happy here. I love being here. Even if you
both go away, I shall stop."

She got up from the table, and went to a window, where she stood biting
her lips, and paying small attention to her mother's elaborate protests
that she, too, had no intention of being moved.

Johanna did not raise her eyes from her book. She could have wept: not
only at the spirit of rebellious dislike, which was beginning to show
more and more clearly in everything Ephie said. But was no one but
herself awake to the change that was taking place in the child, day by
day? She would write to her father, without delay, and make him insist
on their returning to America.

From the moment Maurice entered the room, she did not take her eyes off
him; and, under her scrutiny, the young man soon grew nervous. He sat
and fidgeted, and found nothing to say.

Ephie was wayward: she did not think she wanted to go out; it looked
like rain