"If I'd only known you were coming!" I began going up the stairs trying to explain. "The bureau is chuck-full of silver things--we ought to have a safe. And the closet--all my good dresses are there. We have so little closet-room in this house. In the morning I'll clear it out. I know you'd like separate beds too, but when Will's things were all unpacked there wasn't room for much new furniture. And I'm sorry, Edith, that you haven't a bath connected. We have only one bathroom in the entire house and even that--" Edith wouldn't let me finish. We were in the guest-room now. Her eyes were on the cut-glass in the corner. "I ought never to have gone to Europe," she announced. "Never in this world!" I wished she had never come home, and when I kissed her good-night, all the old rancour and rebellion, dormant for so long, was raging in my heart. I stole downstairs after I was undressed, pulled out Edith's silver service from underneath the stairs and put it on the sideboard; I unlocked Edith's chest of silver, and began laying the breakfast table with the horns-of-plenty; I dragged out some elaborate breakfast napkins; I hauled down from the top shelf of the pantry a Coalport breakfast-set. At one A. M., when I was crawling back stealthily to our room, I had to pass the guest-chamber door. I heard voices, and stopped a moment. "It's human nature for a man, single or married, to prefer a woman in pretty clothes, whoever she is," said Edith. "Of course," Ruth agreed. "When she came in to say good-night did you see the horrid old red worsted bedroom slippers she had on?" "And moreover," Edith went on, "a man likes an attractive house--pretty pictures, pretty ornaments, a place where he is proud to bring his friends." "Naturally." "A man likes to be proud of his wife too," went on the sage, "proud of her friends, of her place in society. Now Lucy--absolutely _no_ social-sense--not a spark. No doubt, if she's made any friends at all, they're the grocery-man and the seamstress, or the woman who washes her hair." Ruth giggled. "Now _you_, Ruth," Edith pursued, "are a girl after my own heart. _You_ are the kind to be the wife of a famous man. _You_ could be Mrs. William Maynard with the right sort of go." I had to smile at the thought of Ruth and Will. Will hates false things--puffs and brilliantine; he hates fluffy negligees, and silly, high-heeled unwalkable shoes; he hates fuss and feathers. I passed on down the hall. "It will take more than Edith Campbell and my young sister Ruth to disturb me, I guess," I said to myself as I turned out several flaring gas-jets in the hall and bathroom, left by those two extravagant creatures to burn all night.