basket-chair that offered itself. It was a spring day, and the windows
of the old schoolroom in which she and her sister were sitting were open
to a back garden, untidily kept, but full of fruit-trees just coming
into blossom. Through their twinkling buds and interlacing branches
could be seen grey college walls--part of the famous garden front of St.
Cyprian's College, Oxford. There seemed to be a slight bluish mist over
the garden and the building, a mist starred with patches of white and
dazzlingly green leaf. And, above all, there was an evening sky,
peaceful and luminous, from which a light wind blew towards the two
girls sitting by the open window. One, the elder, had a face like a
Watteau sketch, with black velvety eyes, hair drawn back from a white
forehead, delicate little mouth, with sharp indentations at the corners,
and a small chin. The other was much more solidly built--a girl of
seventeen, in a plump phase, which however an intelligent eye would have
read as not likely to last; a complexion of red and brown tanned by
exercise; an expression in her clear eyes which was alternately frank
and ironic; and an inconvenient mass of golden brown hair.

"We make a fuss, my dear," said the younger sister, "because we're bound
to make a fuss. Connie, I understand, is to pay us a good round sum for
her board and lodging, so it's only honest she should have a
decent room."

"Yes, but you don't know what she'll call decent," said the other rather
sulkily. "She's probably been used to all sorts of silly luxuries."

"Why of course, considering Uncle Risborough was supposed to have
twenty-odd thousand a year. We're paupers, and she's got to put up with
us. But we couldn't take her money and do nothing in return."

Nora Hooper looked rather sharply at her sister. It fell to her in the
family to be constantly upholding the small daily traditions of honesty
and fair play. It was she who championed the servants, or insisted,
young as she was, on bills being paid, when it would have been more
agreeable to buy frocks and go to London for a theatre. She was a great
power in the house, and both her languid, incompetent mother, and her
pretty sister were often afraid of her. Nora was a "Home Student," and
had just begun to work seriously for English Literature Honours. Alice
on the other hand was the domestic and social daughter. She helped her
mother in the house, had a head full of undergraduates, and regarded the
"Eights" w