Miss Custer hardly knew what to do with herself. She went back to her room, and was tempted to lie down, but then it would rumple her dress and spoil her hair. She thought of the invalid lady, Mrs. Tascher, whose room was at the other end of the hall, but she had an uncomfortable intuition that Mrs. Tascher disliked her. For herself, she disliked nobody: there were people who were not congenial to her, but she never took the trouble to get up a feeling against them. But it seemed to her Mrs. Tascher had not only clearly defined but conscientious likes and dislikes. She had tried to overcome the opposing current so far as it concerned herself, because it was unpleasant; and, although not wholly unaccountable--for she was conscious of some weaknesses, as most mortals are--so far as Mrs. Tascher was affected by her shortcomings the prejudice seemed unfounded. She had never injured her--never, except in that large sense in which all good souls are injured by wrong-doing; which large sense Miss Custer, perhaps, had but a dim consciousness of even when stung--for she was very susceptible--by the criticism, open or implied, of certain high, discriminating natures. After a while she went down to the back regions, and glided in upon the white kitchen-floor with her sweeping skirts. Aunt Ruby looked up with an exclamation of surprise. She was picking over raspberries for tea: "Oh, you oughtn't to come in here, Miss Custer: you'll spoil your clothes." "Impossible," said Miss Custer, glancing around at the cleanness of everything with flattering significance, and seated herself in a low splint-bottomed chair. "To be sure, Peggy scrubbed this morning," said Aunt Ruby with a feeling of satisfaction, "but one can't ever be very sure about a kitchen-floor." "I could always be sure enough of yours to scatter my best things upon it," said Miss Custer, who, wishing to be entertained, was exceedingly good-natured; though, for that matter, she was seldom otherwise. Aunt Ruby, who was greatly taken with the fine-lady boarder who made herself so common, entertained her better than she thought, for Miss Custer took a curious interest in most of the people she met, and liked to study them. Of course Aunt Ruby could not spend time for her own or anybody else's amusement merely: when she got through with the raspberries she went at something else, her loose slippers clattering over the floor back and forth wherever her duty called her. But still, she talked, and Miss Custer sat looking out into the clean-swept back yard with its boxed-up flower-beds blooming with the gayest annuals, and its cooped-up hens with their broods of puffy chickens scratching and picking and chirping outside. "Have Doctor Ebling and Miss Stanley been long engaged?" Miss Custer asked, the conversation having somehow led up to that query.