p-hat. We
ought to give him a present, too. He was always very nice to father."

"But," cried Josephine, flouncing on her pillow and staring across the
dark at Constantia, "father's head!" And suddenly, for one awful moment,
she nearly giggled. Not, of course, that she felt in the least like
giggling. It must have been habit. Years ago, when they had stayed awake
at night talking, their beds had simply heaved. And now the porter's
head, disappearing, popped out, like a candle, under father's hat... The
giggle mounted, mounted; she clenched her hands; she fought it down; she
frowned fiercely at the dark and said "Remember" terribly sternly.

"We can decide to-morrow," she said.

Constantia had noticed nothing; she sighed.

"Do you think we ought to have our dressing-gowns dyed as well?"

"Black?" almost shrieked Josephine.

"Well, what else?" said Constantia. "I was thinking--it doesn't seem
quite sincere, in a way, to wear black out of doors and when we're fully
dressed, and then when we're at home--"

"But nobody sees us," said Josephine. She gave the bedclothes such a
twitch that both her feet became uncovered, and she had to creep up the
pillows to get them well under again.

"Kate does," said Constantia. "And the postman very well might."

Josephine thought of her dark-red slippers, which matched her
dressing-gown, and of Constantia's favourite indefinite green ones which
went with hers. Black! Two black dressing-gowns and two pairs of black
woolly slippers, creeping off to the bathroom like black cats.

"I don't think it's absolutely necessary," said she.

Silence. Then Constantia said, "We shall have to post the papers with
the notice in them to-morrow to catch the Ceylon mail... How many letters
have we had up till now?"

"Twenty-three."

Josephine had replied to them all, and twenty-three times when she came
to "We miss our dear father so much" she had broken down and had to use
her handkerchief, and on some of them even to soak up a very light-blue
tear with an edge of blotting-paper. Strange! She couldn't have put
it on--but twenty-three times. Even now, though, when she said over to
herself sadly "We miss our dear father so much," she could have cried if
she'd wanted to.

"Have you got enough stamps?" came from Constantia.

"Oh, how can I tell?" said Josephine crossly. "What's the good of asking
me that now?"

"I was just wondering," said Constantia mildly.

Silence again. There came a li