Sarah lifted her eyes with a wondering, incredulous stare at the flippant inquisitor. "I have felt thus, but I did not suppose that you had." "Oh, I have a 'blue' turn now and then, but the disease is always more dangerous with girls of your sort--the reading, thinking, strong-minded kind. And the older you grow, the worse you will get. I haven't as much book knowledge as you have, but I know more of the world we live in. Take my advice and settle down to woman's right sphere. Drive away the vapors with beaux and fancy-work now. By-and-by a husband and an establishment will give you something else to think about." Sarah would have replied, but Lucy broke in with a laugh, light and sweet. "You two are always at cross-questions! Why can't you be satisfied to let one another alone? Sarah and I never quarrel, Vic.. We agree to disagree. She gives me my way, and I don't meddle with her. If she likes the blues (they say some people enjoy them), where's the harm of her having them? They never come near me. If I get stupid, I go to bed and sleep it off. Don't you think I have done ten rows since breakfast? What a godsend a rainy day is, when one has a fascinating piece of work on hand!" Too proud to seem to abandon the field, Sarah sat for half an hour longer, stitching steadily away at the complicated tracery upon the ground to be worked; then, as the dimmer daylight caused the others to draw near to the windows, she pushed aside her table and put by her sewing. "Don't let us drive you away!" said Victoria's mock-polite tones, and Lucy added, kindly, "We do not mean to disturb you, Sarah, dear." "You do not disturb me!" was the reply to the latter. The other had neither glance nor word. Up another flight she mounted to a room, much smaller than that she had left and far plainer in its appointments. The higher one went in Mrs. Hunt's house the less splendid everything became. In the state spare chamber--a story below--nothing of comfort and luxury was wanting, from the carved rosewood bedstead, with the regal-looking canopy overshadowing its pillows, down to the Bohemian and cut-glass scent bottles upon the marble of the dressing-cabinet. Sarah's carpet was common ingrain, neither pretty nor new; a cottage bedstead of painted wood; bureau and washstand of the same material; two chairs and a small table were all the furniture her mother adjudged needful. To these the girl had added, from her pittance of pocket-money, a set of hanging bookshelves, a portable desk, an easel and two or three good engravings that adorned the walls.