"We've taken too much from Philip as it is," she thought. "I must put a stop to this, somehow!" She decided to drop a hint of warning to Jacqueline herself. Treachery it might be, but, as has been seen, Jemima was quite capable of treachery when it marched with expediency. Drop a hint she accordingly did, one of her own especial brand of hints, as delicate and as subtle as a dynamite bomb. It occurred at bedtime, when Jemima--the Thorpes were spending the night--slipped across into the room that had been the nursery to chat with her sister in the old-time intimacy of hair-brushing. Indeed, the room was still a nursery, for the crib that had been in turn Jemima's and Jacqueline's was drawn up close beside Jacqueline's bed, and contained the rosy, sleeping Kitty, with a favorite rattle tight clasped in one pink fist. "Isn't she too precious, Jemmy?" whispered her foster-mother, who was leaning over the crib as her sister entered. Jemima responded without particular enthusiasm--to her small Kitty would always represent in concrete form the doctrine of Original Sin. She said, "Come and let me show you how to fix your hair, dear, as they do it in New York. You're old enough now to wear it up." "I try to, but it won't stay put, there's such a mop of it!" She submitted willingly to the other's deft ministrations. "Neither mother nor I look half as nice since you got married, Jemmy. Oh, I do love your smooth hands!" She held one affectionately to her cheek. "They're so nimble and sure of themselves, as if each finger had a little brain of its own that knew just exactly what it was about." "I suppose, if one has a brain at all, it's everywhere, in the fingers as well as the head; just like God in the universe," said the other, rather absently. "Anyway, if I've got brains, you've got hair, and I don't know but what that's more important. You'll be a lovely creature like mother when I'm a weazened little old woman, as bald as a monkey--or with false things on, like Aunt Jemima. Intellectual hair is always so thin and brittle." "Why, Blossom! Yours is just like curly sunlight!" "Oh, yes, pretty while it lasts," said the other, dispassionately. "But not vital, like yours and mother's. You're both so splendidly vital. That's why--Look here, Jacky, Philip's more gone on mother than ever, isn't he? He just follows her around with his eyes, like that sentimental hound puppy who is always trying to crawl into her lap--" "And spilling off," finished Jacqueline, with a chuckle. "I know! If she says 'good dog' to him, he wags steadily for an hour.--I used to think you were wrong about it," she added seriously, "and that Phil couldn't possibly be in love with any one so old as mother; not like men are with girls, you know. But lately--I'm not so sure." Poor Jacqueline had learned a good deal lately about the possibilities of loving. Jemima commented with satisfaction. "I'm glad _you_ see it, anyway!"