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Rose was the household’s Aurora. Following the donning of her limp and obscure garments it was Rose’s daily duty to tear the silent family from its slumbers. Ma was always awake, her sick eyes fixed hopefully on the door. For fourteen years it had been the same.

“Sleeping?”

“Sleeping! I haven’t closed an eye all night.”

Rose had learned not to dispute that statement.

“It’s spring out! I’m going to clean the closets and the bureau drawers to-day. I’ll have your coffee in a jiffy. Do you feel like getting up and sitting out on the back porch, toward noon, maybe?”

On her way kitchenward she stopped for a sharp tattoo at the door of the room in which Pa and Al slept. A sleepy grunt of remonstrance rewarded her. She came to Floss’s door, turned the knob softly, peered in. Floss was sleeping as twenty sleeps, deeply, dreamlessly, one slim bare arm outflung, the lashes resting ever so lightly on the delicate curve of cheek. As she lay there asleep in her disordered bedroom, her clothes strewing chair, dresser, floor, Floss’s tastes, mental equipment, spiritual make-up, innermost thoughts, were as plainly to be read by the observer as though she had been scientifically charted by a psycho-analyst, a metaphysician and her dearest girl friend.

“Floss! Floss, honey! Quarter to seven!” Floss stirred, moaned faintly, dropped into sleep again.

Fifteen minutes later, the table set, the coffee simmering, the morning paper brought from the back porch to Ma, Rose had heard none of the sounds that proclaimed the family astir–the banging of drawers, the rush of running water, the slap of slippered feet. A peep of enquiry into the depths of the coffee pot, the gas turned to a circle of blue beads, and she was down the hall to sound the second alarm.

“Floss, you know if Al once gets into the bathroom!” Floss sat up in bed, her eyes still closed. She made little clucking sounds with her tongue and lips, as a baby does when it wakes. Drugged with sleep, hair tousled, muscles sagging, at seven o’clock in the morning, the most trying hour in the day for a woman, Floss was still triumphantly pretty. She had on one of those absurd pink muslin nightgowns, artfully designed to look like crepe de chine. You’ve seen them rosily displayed in the cheaper shop windows, marked ninety-eight cents, and you may have wondered who might buy them, forgetting that there is an imitation mind for every imitation article in the world.

Rose stooped, picked up a pair of silk stockings from the floor, and ran an investigating hand through to heel and toe. She plucked a soiled pink blouse off the back of a chair, eyed it critically, and tucked it under her arm with the stockings.

“Did you have a good time last night?”

Floss yawned elaborately, stretched her slim arms high above her head; then, with a desperate effort, flung back the bed-clothes, swung her legs over the side of the bed and slipped her toes into the shabby, pomponed slippers that lay on the floor.

“I say, did you have a g–“

“Oh Lord, I don’t know! I guess so,” snapped Floss. Temperamentally, Floss was not at her best at seven o’clock on Monday morning. Rose did not pursue the subject. She tried another tack.

“It’s as mild as summer out. I see the Werners and the Burkes are housecleaning. I thought I’d start to-day with the closets, and the bureau drawers. You could wear your blue this morning, if it was pressed.”

Floss yawned again, disinterestedly, and folded her kimono about her.

“Go as far as you like. Only don’t put things back in my closet so’s I can’t ever find ’em again. I wish you’d press that blue skirt. And wash out the Georgette crepe waist. I might need it.”

The blouse, and skirt, and stockings under her arm, Rose went back to the kitchen to prepare her mother’s breakfast tray. Wafted back to her came the acrid odour of Pa’s matutinal pipe, and the accustomed bickering between Al and Floss over the possession of the bathroom.