"It's better than a ring," said Joanna, "leastways it's bigger," and she laughed to herself. She led the way upstairs, while Mrs. Tolhurst and old Stuppeny waltzed recriminatingly with Ellen's box. "Where are you taking me?" asked her sister, pausing with her hand on the door-knob of Joanna's bedroom. "Never you mind--come on." Would Mene Tekel, she wondered, have remembered to set the lamps, so that the room should not depend on the faint gutter of sunset to display its glories? She opened the door, and was reassured--a fury of light and colour leapt out--rose, blue, green, buff, and the port-wine red of mahogany. The pink curtains were drawn, but there was no fire in the grate--for fires in bedrooms were unknown at Ansdore; however, a Christmas-like effect was given by sprigs of holly stuck in the picture-frames, and a string of paper flowers hung from the bed-tester to the top of the big woolly bell-rope by the mantelpiece. Joanna heard her sister gasp. "It's yours, Ellen--your new room. I've given it to you--all to yourself. There's the spare mahogany furniture, and the best pictures, and poor father's Buffalo certificate." The triumph of her own achievement melted away the last of her uneasiness--she seized Ellen in her arms and kissed her, knocking her hat over one ear. "See, you've got new curtains--eighteenpence a yard ... and that's mother's text--'Inasmuch....' and I've bought a new soap-dish at Godfrey's--it doesn't quite go with the basin, but they've both got roses on 'em ... and you won't mind there being a few of my gowns in the wardrobe--only the skirts--I've got room for the bodies in my drawers ... that's the basket armchair out of the dining-room, with a new cover that Mene Tekel fixed for it ... the clock's out of the spare room--it don't go, but it looks fine on the mantelpiece.... Say, duckie, are you pleased?--are you pleased with your old Jo?" "Oh, Joanna ... thank you," said Ellen. "Well, I'll have to be leaving you now--that gal's got a rabbit pie in the oven for our tea, and I must go and have a look at her crust. You unpack and clean yourself--and be careful not to spoil anything." Sec.5 Supper that night was rather a quiet meal. Something about Ellen drove Joanna back into her old sense of estrangement. Her sister made her think of a lily on a thundery day. She wore a clinging dress of dull green stuff, which sheathed her delicate figure like a lily bract--her throat rose out of it like a lily stalk, and her face, with its small features and soft skin, was the face of a white flower. About her clung a dim atmosphere of the languid and exotic, like the lily's scent which is so unlike the lily. "Ellen," broke out Joanna, with a glance down at her own high, tight bosom, "don't you ever wear stays?" "No. Miss Collins and the gym mistress both say it's unhealthy." "Unhealthy! And don't they never wear none themselves?"