The mules clumpety-clumped to the suitcases which Hugh had unstrapped for Ariel before he left her, and throwing back their covers Anne began tossing the things inside about as roughly as the inspector on the pier had done. “Dinner dress?” she inquired. “You’ve just time to change.” “There it is. The green!” Ariel spoke hurriedly, to stop the useless mauling of her delicate possessions. Anne jerked out the green frock. “Rather nice,” she approved. “Clever.” As she tossed it to Ariel she caught sight of the coat. “My word! But you are a gorgeous baby—! What a duck, what a _lamb_ of a coat! You lucky, lucky girl!” She snatched it up from the bed and held it ecstatically before her person, and turned to look at it in the mirror of the door. Ariel did not know what to do. She wanted to tell Anne that it was a gift from her brother. But she couldn’t. For suddenly, and for the first time, the gift rather troubled her. It was too much. Hugh should never have done it. While Ariel hesitated, Anne had dropped the coat and turned to sit in front of Ariel’s dressing table. Delicately, with the tips of first the jewel-nailed little finger of one hand, then the other, she began to work at the contours of her painted lips, pointing up the cynical expression. The color was so recently applied that it was still malleable. As she worked at this delicate bit of art she talked, a steady flow of words, but thrown out all in that halting, throaty manner that made it seem not so much real speech from a real person as goblin talk. “I don’t envy you, Ariel, being thrown into the middle of our dinner table for the first time to-night. No wonder Hugh’s worried you’ll feel ‘strange.’ He’s been in my room, begging me tearfully to make you feel cozy. I love to please Hugh. It’s so easy—like tickling a baby.” Ariel was slipping the green frock over her head. Anne whirled suddenly around on her and two brown eyes, for the moment open and even naïve in their expression, looked her over. What they saw was a thin face with rather narrow, rather light eyes and coral-faint lips just then emerging from the green cloud of the dinner frock. “Hello, Mermaid,” she smiled. “You look just like one. What do I look like? Don’t be afraid to say.” But, Ariel, looking into the friendly face, had already forgotten the ugly dolls. Far away, deep at the heart of the house, three musical notes sounded. “That’s the dinner gong. And we’re both of us late. You must think it up and tell me later, what I look like. Appease my mummy. That’s a duck. She hates unpunctuality. Tell her we got so interested in each other we forgot the time.” She was gone. Ariel stooped and found her own reflection in the mirror. She pushed at her hair with shaking fingers. No time now to look for her brush in the chaos that Anne had made of the suitcases. She was glad Anne had liked the frock. Of course it was lovely, for her father had planned it. It was his creation, like his pictures.