"No, sir--I mean ma'am. Nobody else is goin' to have to hate this the way I have!" "Pink," repeated Miss Barry disapprovingly. "The blue would look quite well on you, I dare say, but pink.--Don't you know your hair is red, and you'd look--" Blanche Aurora winced. She was afraid to let her mistress go on for fear she was intending something crushing about freckles. "I don't care--I don't care," she struck in wildly. "You don't know, _she_ don't know, nobody knows how I love pink. Pink's happiness, pink is, whether you see it in the sky or in the roses or where! Don't, Miss Barry, don't!" The loud voice broke, and two big tears suddenly overflowed from the round eyes and rushed down the freckled cheeks, while Blanche Aurora ran stormily through the second swing door into the kitchen. The door swept back and forth under the swift impact, and Miss Barry stared at her jellies. "Don't what!" she said to herself in silent amazement and injury. "Don't what!" CHAPTER XVIII THE PINK DRESS Mrs. Porter was Miss Barry's prop and stay in matters regarding her niece, and she turned to her when succeeding days revealed the fact that Linda had set out deliberately to spoil the "help." The mistress of the house left the kitchen one morning after her plans were perfected for dinner and sought Mrs. Porter. She could hear the faint buzzing of the sewing machine which lived by the front window in the hall upstairs. She ascended with a firm tread. "This is a shame," she announced warmly, as she stood beside her friend, viewing the lengths of silky soft pink stuff which were running beneath the swift needle. "What's a shame?" asked Mrs. Porter, without stopping her work. Miss Barry sat down in a chair opposite her. "That you should be penned up in the house this beautiful morning stitching away hour after hour. You were doing the same thing yesterday." "It's fun," returned Mrs. Porter. "Oh, fun!" scornfully. "You always say everything's fun--walking to the village when Blanche Aurora has carelessly forgotten something, going out in the rain to take in the towels she's overlooked--everything's fun with you." Mrs. Porter smiled without raising her eyes from her fine seam. "I don't believe you ever taught music eight hours a day," she said. "Where's Linda?" demanded Miss Barry, but she lowered her voice. She still regarded her niece as an uncertain quantity, possibly dangerous. "Gone to Portland." "For the land's sake!" ejaculated Miss Barry, her tone no longer _sotto voce_. There was no danger of Linda's hearing from the trolley car. "What takes her there?" "Sh!" warned Mrs. Porter, still with her gay smile. "Underclothes for the little girl, I think. I'm only guessing."