So those spring months saw an unusual succession of gaieties in the doctor's shabby house, in the shape of merry, informal gatherings, which went far to cement newly-made friendships. Agatha and Christabel Rendell returned home, only to be succeeded by the remaining three sisters of the family, who proved quite as interesting in their various ways. Dear good Maud was as sweet and placid as her own fat baby, while Elsie was an intense young person, quite different from anyone else whom Betty and Cynthia had ever encountered. Her hair was parted in the middle and brushed smoothly over her ears; she wore quaintly unfashionable garments, and--thrilling item of interest!--was engaged to be married to a sub-editor of a magazine, who was reported to be even more intense than herself. Elsie disdained the ordinary sign of betrothal; a ring, she explained to the astonished girls, was a badge of servitude to which no self-respecting woman should submit, and she wore in its place a gold locket, bearing strange cabalistic signs, the meaning of which the beholders vainly yearned to discover. With regard to the future, Elsie and her editor announced their intention of living "the higher life"--a high-sounding phrase which was not a little impressive, until one heard the details thereof, which scarcely appealed to the ordinary imagination. They were going to subsist on a diet of bread and nuts, a regime which did away at one fell swoop with the need of such superfluities as cook and kitchen; they would have no curtains nor draperies, as woollens harbour microbes; no wall-papers, as papers exude poisons; no ornaments, since it was a sin to waste the precious hours in dusting what was of no use. What they _were_ going to have, soon became the question in the minds of the anxious hearers, while "Poor old Elsie!" cried Nan Vanburgh, laughing. "I give her a month before I am taken for a day's hard shopping at Maple's! She rides her hobbies so violently that they collapse of sheer exhaustion before she has time to put them into practice!" In the matter of conversation, Elsie swayed between the high-flown and the natural, sometimes chatting away in ordinary commonplace fashion, at other times confounding her hearers by weird and mysterious utterances. "Have you ever felt the intense meaning in _colour_?" she demanded one day, at the end of a silence during which she had been gazing into the heart of the fire. Betty stared aghast, but Cynthia, with finer humour, smiled demurely, and replied-- "Of blues--yes! I feel it horribly at times," whereupon, being a Rendell, Elsie descended promptly from her high horse, and chuckled with enjoyment.