ts and brush off her shoes This done, she
went into the kitchen, where a warm atmosphere still lingered, and,
preferring to be alone, sat down there, with her feet in the oven and
her chin in her hands, and once more fell into a brown study. Only a few
minutes later, Kittie came into the dining-room for something, and on
going back, failed to close the door, so that the murmur of voices came
quite distinctly out to the quiet kitchen. A discussion was warmly in
progress, and in a minute Olive started out of her reverie at hearing
her name spoken.

"What's the use? Olive knows, or ought to know better." It was
Ernestine's voice.

"But, mama says," interposed Bea, mildly persuasive, "that we don't try
hard enough; we give up too soon."

"Bother," cried Kat, "would she have us always playing the 'gentle
sister, meek and mild,' and go whining about Olive as though her company
was a great honor. I'm sure we had a season of always begging her to go
with us, and didn't she snap us up like a rat-trap?"

"She--well--she's very odd you know," said Bea, wondering if her quiver
of defense would outlast the arrows of complaint.

"Yes, odd, as an odd shoe," laughed Kat with a yawn.

"What did mama say to you, Bea?" asked Ernestine.

"She said that Olive's greatest fault was being so nasty and sensitive,
and that because she was rather plain and--"

"She isn't," interrupted Kittie, with much energy. "I think she has
beautiful eyes, if she just wouldn't scowl so much, and when she laughs
her mouth and teeth are just as pretty, only she never laughs more'n
once a month, so people don't know it. Not one of us has such lovely
thick hair as she has, and if she just would wave or crimp it a little
bit in front, I think--well, I think she would be real pretty." And
overcome with this valuable earnest defence, Kittie sat down and looked
complacent.

"When I see Olive Dering crimping her hair, and laughing instead of
scowling, I will look for the end of the world," said Ernestine, with
some asperity, as she walked over to the glass and surveyed her own
hair, which Kittie had intimated was inferior to Olive's. "She can't do
it, she was made to frown and stay by herself and she better do it."

"You don't mean it, Ernestine, you know you don't," said Bea, in a tone
of calm conviction, and beginning to feel that the duties of elder
sister imposed a warmer defense of this abused one, upon her. "I want to
tell you how I feel, though it ma