er," Meg said loftily. "I take my
position very seriously."

"But you can't go about Wren's End in caps. Everybody knows you down
there."

"They'll find out they don't know me as well as they thought, that's
all."

"Meg, tell me, what did Hannah say when she saw your poor shorn head?"

"Hannah, as usual, referred to my Maker, and said that had He intended
me to have short hair He would either have caused it not to grow or
afflicted me with some disease which necessitated shearing; and she
added that such havers are just flying in the face of Providence."

"So they are."

"All the more reason to cover them up, and I wish to impress the
children."

"Those children will be sadly browbeaten, I can see, and as for their
poor aunt, she won't be able to call her soul her own."

"That," Meg said, triumphantly, "is precisely why I'm so eager to come.
When you've been an underling all your life you can't imagine what a joy
it is to be top dog occasionally."

"In that respect," Jan said firmly, "it must be turn and turn about. I
won't let you come unless you promise--swear, here and now--that when I
consider you are looking fagged--'a wispy wraith,' as Daddie used to
say--if I command you to take a day in bed, in bed you will stay till I
give you leave to get up. Unless you promise me this, the contract is
off."

"I'll promise anything you like. The idea of being _pressed_ to remain
in bed strikes me as merely comic. You have evidently no notion how
persons in a subordinate position ought to be treated. Bed, indeed!"

"I think you might have waited till I got back before you parted with
your hair." Jan's tone was decidedly huffy.

"Now don't nag. That subject is closed. What about _your_ hair. Do you
know it is almost white?"

"And what more suitable for a maiden aunt? As that is to be my _role_
for the future I may as well look the part."

"But you don't--that's what I complain of. The whiter your hair grows
the younger your face gets. You're a contradiction, a paradox, you
provoke conjecture, you're indecently noticeable. Mr. Ross would have
loved to paint you."

Jan shook her head. "No, Daddie never wanted to paint anything about me
except my arms."

"He'd want to paint you now," Meg insisted obstinately. "_I_ know the
sort of person he liked to paint."

"He never would paint people unless he _did_ like them," Jan said,
smiling as at some recollection. "Do you remember how he utterly refused
to paint tha