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“Hush your nonsense!” bade Jane. Then, catching at the delicate square of linen in Gwendolyn’s hand, “How’d you git ink smeared over your handkerchief? What do you suppose your mamma’d say if she was to come upon it? I’d be blamed—as usual!”

“Who are They’?” persisted Gwendolyn. “‘They’ do so many things. And I want to tell ’em that I like pockets in all my dresses.”

Jane ignored the question.

“Yesterday you said ‘They’ would send us soda-water,” went on Gwendolyn—talking to herself now, rather than to the nurse. “And I’d like to know where ‘They’ find soda-water.” Whereupon she fell to pondering the question. Evidently this, like many another propounded to Jane or Miss Royle; to Thomas; to her music-teacher, Miss Brown; to Mademoiselle Du Bois, her French teacher; and to her teacher of German, was one that was meant to remain a secret of the grown-ups.

Jane, having unbuttoned the riding-coat, pulled at the small black boots. She was also talking to herself, for her lips moved.

The moment Gwendolyn caught sight of her unshod feet, she had a new idea—the securing of a long-denied privilege by urging the occasion. “Oh, Jane,” she cried. “May I go barefoot?—just for a little while. I want to.” Jane stripped off the cobwebby stockings. Gwendolyn wriggled her ten pink toes. “May I, Jane?”

“You can go barefoot to bed,” said Jane.

Gwendolyn’s bed stood midway of the nursery, partly hidden by a high tapestried screen. It was a beautiful bed, carved and enamelled, and panelled—head and foot—with woven cane. But to Gwendolyn it was, by day, a white instrument of torture. She gave it a glance of disfavor now, and refrained from pursuing her idea.

When the muslin dress was donned, and a pink satin hair-bow replaced the black one that bobbed on Gwendolyn’s head when she rode, she returned to the window and sat down. The seat was deep, and her shiny patent-leather slippers stuck straight out in front of her. In one hand she held a fresh handkerchief. She nibbled at it thoughtfully. She was still wondering about “They.”

Thomas looked cross when he came in to serve her noon dinner. He arranged the table with a jerk and a bang.

“So old Royle up and outed, did she?” he said to Jane.

“Hush!” counseled Jane, significantly, and rolled her eyes in the direction of the window-seat.

Gwendolyn stopped nibbling her handkerchief.

“And our plans is spoiled,” went on Thomas. “Well, ain’t that our luck! And I suppose you couldn’t manage to leave a certain party—”

Gwendolyn had been watching Thomas. Now she fell to observing the silver buckles on her slippers. She might not know who “They” were. But “a certain party”—

“Leave?” repeated Jane, “Who with? Not alone, surely you don’t mean. For something’s gone wrong already to-day, as you’ll see if you’ll use your eyes. And a fuss or a howl’d mean that somebody’d hear, and tattle to the Madam, and—”

Thomas said something under his breath.

“So we can’t go after all,” resumed Jane; “—leastways not like we’d counted on. And it’s too exasperatin’. Here I am, a person that likes my freedom once in a while, and a glimpse at the shop-windows,—exactly as much as old you-know-who does—and a bit of tea afterwards with a—a friend.”

At this point, Gwendolyn glanced up—just in time to see Thomas regarding Jane with a broad grin. And Jane was smiling back at him, her face so suffused with blushes that there was not a freckle to be seen.

Now Jane sighed, and stood looking down with hands folded. “What good does it do to talk, though,” she observed sadly. “Day in and day out, day in and day out, I have to dance attendance.”

It was Gwendolyn’s turn to color. She got down quickly and came forward.

“Sh!” warned Thomas. He busied himself with laying the silver.

Gwendolyn halted in front of Jane, and lifted a puzzled face. “But—but, Jane,” she began defensively, “you don’t ever dance.”

“Now, whatever do you think I was talkin’ about?” demanded Jane, roughly. “You dance, don’t you, at Monsoor Tellegen’s, of a Saturday afternoon? Well, so do I when I get a’ evenin’ off,—which isn’t often, as you well know, Miss. And now your dinner’s ready. So eat it, without any more clackin’.”

Gwendolyn climbed upon the plump rounding seat of a white-and-gold chair.