"Never. They look much better without--besides, small waists are going out of fashion." "But ... Ellen ... it ain't seemly--to show the natural shape of your body as you're doing." "I've been told my figure's a very good one." "And whoever dared make such a remark to you?" "It was a compliment." "I don't call it any compliment to say such things to a young girl. Besides, what right have you to go showing what you was meant to hide?" "I'm not showing anything I was meant to hide. My figure isn't nearly so pronounced as yours--if I had your figure, I couldn't wear this sort of frock." "My figure is as God made it"--which it certainly was not--"and I was brought up to be the shape of a woman, in proper stays, and not the shape of a heathen statue. I'd be ashamed for any of the folk around here to see you like that--and if Arthur Alce, or any other man, came in, I'd either have to send you out or wrap the table-cover round you." Ellen took refuge in a haughty silence, and Joanna began to feel uneasy and depressed. She thought that Ellen was "fast." Was this what she had learned at school--to flout the standards of her home? Sec.6 The next morning Joanna overslept herself, in consequence of a restless hour during the first part of the night. As a result, it had struck half past seven before she went into her sister's room. She was not the kind of person who knocks at doors, and burst in to find Ellen, inadequately clothed in funny little garments, doing something very busily inside the cupboard. "Hullo, duckie! And how did you sleep in your lovely bed?" She was once more aglow with the vitality and triumph of her own being, but the next moment she experienced a vague sense of chill--something was the matter with the room, something had happened to it. It had lost its sense of cheerful riot, and wore a chastened, hangdog air. In a spasm of consternation Joanna realized that Ellen had been tampering with it. "What have you done?--Where's my pictures?--Where've you put the window curtains?" she cried at last. Ellen stiffened herself and tried not to look guilty. "I'm just trying to find room for my own things." Joanna stared about her. "Where's father's Buffalo certificate?" "I've put it in the cupboard." "In the cupboard!--father's ... and I'm blessed if you haven't taken down the curtains." "They clash with the carpet--it quite hurts me to look at them. Really, Joanna, if this is my room, you oughtn't to mind what I do in it." "Your room, indeed!--You've got some sass!--And I spending more'n forty pound fixing it up for you. I've given you new wall paper and new carpet and new curtains and all the best pictures, and took an unaccountable lot of trouble, and now you go and mess it up."