inferior—the kind suitable to the kitchen and associating with the policeman." 

 Cecilia had turned another page, but she had not read it. The print was jumping dangerously from the quick pump of her heart. "I will not move," she thought.  "I will not move, nor show them that I hear." 

 "Imagine allowing an unknown man to buy you sodas!" said Annette, who was looking out of the window.  "Isn't it utterly hopeless?" 

 There was a pained silence. The hopelessness of it had evidently eaten deeply into the systems of Annette and the green-eyed. 

 "Milk, an' sugar, if yuh have it," mimicked the green-eyed. She scored her point. Cecilia's book closed. She got up quickly and went toward the door. There she paused with her hand on the jamb.  "I hope it pleases you to make me so unhappy," she said quietly, "for otherwise I don't know what you are accomplishing."  Then she went upstairs to an always lonely room. She closed the door gently and lay across the bed, staring at the ceiling. She never cried any more. She reached beneath the pillow. Her cold and moist little hand closed about the letter of a brick king. 

 "I love you!" she whispered fiercely.  "I shall make you proud of me, but Maw, I'm glad you died before the roses came! I'm glad! I'm glad! ... They have so many thorns!" 

 The young ladies downstairs didn't giggle as usual. They avoided each other's eyes. At last Annette said, "Upstart! How dared she speak to me that way!"  It was said in an effort to reinstate her superior right to exercise the rack. The green-eyed didn't answer. She looked out of the window. At last she said carelessly, "Going to dress."  And Annette was not invited to her room. 

 The green-eyed stood still just inside her door. She thought of a fat father, and of his code of morals. The mother whom her eyes came from was very distant. 

 "It has been utterly devilish!" she said loudly.  "Utterly. And I did it while I read 'The Mob,' and ranted over it."  Then she threw a book across the room, which spelled emotional crisis for her temperament and, this time, reform. Her green eyes were full of healthily ashamed tears. 

 CHAPTER VI A HINT OF PINK 

 Cecilia sat well forward in the parquet seats of an opera house in Boston. Her small hand was curled up in the fat palm of a fat priest. The people who saw this smiled indulgently, then 

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