tell who slept under ’em last—” 

 “You cat!” exclaimed Norah, making a little rush at me. “If you weren’t supposed to be ill I’d shake you! Comparing my darling rosebud quilt to your miserable gray blankets! Just for that I’ll make you eat an extra pair of eggs.” 

 There never was a sister like Norah. But then, who ever heard of a brother-in-law like Max? No woman—not even a frazzled-out newspaper woman—could receive the love and care that they gave me, and fail to flourish under it. They had been Dad and Mother to me since the day when Norah had tucked me under her arm and carried me away from New York. Sis was an angel; a comforting, twentieth-century angel, with white apron strings for wings, and a tempting tray in her hands in place of the hymn books and palm leaves that the picture-book angels carry. She coaxed the inevitable eggs and beef into more tempting forms than Mrs. Rorer ever guessed at. She could disguise those two plain, nourishing articles of diet so effectually that neither hen nor cow would have suspected either of having once been part of her anatomy. Once I ate halfway through a melting, fluffy, peach-bedecked plate of something before I discovered that it was only another egg in disguise. 

 “Feel like eating a great big dinner to-day, Kidlet?” Norah would ask in the morning as she stood at my bedside (with a glass of egg-something in her hand, of course). 

 “Eat!”—horror and disgust shuddering through my voice—“Eat! Ugh! Don’t s-s-speak of it to me. And for pity’s sake tell Frieda to shut the kitchen door when you go down, will you? I can smell something like ugh!—like pot roast, with gravy!” And I would turn my face to the wall. 

 Three hours later I would hear Sis coming softly up the stairs, accompanied by a tinkling of china and glass. I would face her, all protest. 

 “Didn’t I tell you, Sis, that I couldn’t eat a mouthful? Not a mouthf—um-m-m-m! How perfectly scrumptious that looks! What’s that affair in the lettuce leaf? Oh, can’t I begin on that divine-looking pinky stuff in the tall glass? H’m? Oh, please!” 

 “I thought—” Norah would begin; and then she would snigger softly. 

 “Oh, well, that was hours ago,” I would explain, loftily. “Perhaps I could manage a bite or two now.” 

 Whereupon I would demolish everything except the china and doilies. 

 It was at this 

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