silence her. Indeed, she sometimes listened
with a certain amount of curiosity, and Fanny Bellairs assumed a
marvellous personality and appearance in her mind's eye.

That the original did not in the least come up to her expectations was
something of a surprise. About three months after her first arrival at
Montague Square Joan reached home rather late one evening to find her
room already occupied. A girl sat, her feet tucked underneath her, on
the principal chair under the lamplight; she had been crying, for a
tight, damp ball of a handkerchief lay on the floor, and at the sound of
Joan's entry she turned a tear-stained face to greet her.

"I thought you were never coming"--the voice held a plaintive sob in
it--"and I am that down-hearted and miserable."

Joan put down her things hastily and came across. "I am so sorry," she
said, groping through her mind to discover who her visitor might be;
"did Mrs. Carew tell you I was in?--how stupid of her."

The girl in the chair gulped back her tears and laughed. "No, she
didn't," she contradicted; "she told me that you wouldn't want to see me
if you were in; that the likes of you did not know the likes of me, and
that I was not to come up. But I came"--she held out impulsive hands. "I
guess you aren't angry," she said; "when I get the silly hump, which
isn't often, I go mad if I have to stay by myself. I'll be as good
as"--she glanced round the room--"as good as you," she finished, "if you
will let me stay."

"Why, of course," said Joan. "I don't know what Mrs. Carew can have been
talking about. I don't know you, so I can't see how she can have thought
I would not want to see you."

"I can though." The girl shook forward a sudden halo of curls and
laughed in a way which it was impossible to resist. "I am Fanny, from
downstairs, and Mrs. Carew is a silly old woman who talks a lot, but she
is not stupid enough not to know the difference between a girl like you
and a fly-by-night like me. Now I have shocked you," she went on
breathlessly, seeing Joan's flush, "just when I was setting out to be
good. I'll bite my tongue out and start again."

She coughed once with alarming intensity. Joan moved slowly away and
took off her hat and coat. So this was Fanny Bellairs, the girl whose
doings provided such a purple background for her own dull existence. She
looked again at the little figure, lying back now, eyes closed, lips
tremulous from the struggle for breath which her fit of