Nan had not taken off her hat yet and around her neck she was wearing Joyce’s pretty gray fox neckpiece, Aunt Mary’s last Christmas gift, which Joyce had supposed was safely put away in camphor on her closet shelf. Joyce had not noticed it in the darkness of the hall, but now the indignity struck her in the face like a blow as Nan stood out in the open doorway smartly gowned and powdered and rouged just a bit, her face angry and haughty, her air imperious: “You ungrateful, wicked girl!” broke forth Nan. “You might just as well have been a murderer! Suppose Junior had been brought home dying and no one to open the house?” “I’m sorry, Nan,” began Joyce, “I did not expect to be gone so long. I was told there would be only one examination today.” “Examinations! Don’t talk to me about examinations! That’s all you care about! It’s nothing to you that the little child who has lived under the same roof with you for three years is seriously hurt. It’s nothing to you even if he had been killed. And he might have been killed, _easily_! Yes, he might, you wicked girl! It was at noon he was playing ball when he got hit, and you knew I didn’t want him to stay at school at noontime just for that reason. The bad boys tried to hurt him,” so she raved on, “It was your fault. Entirely your fault!” There was absolutely no use in trying to say anything in reply. Nannette would not let her. Whenever she opened her lips to say she was sorry her cousin screamed the louder, till Joyce finally closed her lips and went about her work with white, set face, wishing somehow she might get away from this awful earth for a little while, wondering what would be the outcome of all this when Gene got home. Gene was not very careful himself about Junior. He spoiled him horribly, but he was very keen about defending him always. As she went about her kitchen work she tried to think what she could say or do that would still the tempest. It seemed to her that her heart was bursting with the trouble. Maybe she ought to have given up the examination after all. Maybe she should have stayed at home. But that would have meant everlasting dependence upon those to whom she was not closely bound. And Junior had already recovered sufficiently to be out in his bandages swinging on the gate. He could not be seriously injured. Oh, why could she not have died instead of Aunt Mary! Why did people have to bring children into the world and then leave them to fend for themselves where they were not wanted? What was life all for anyway? Dorothea hovered around like a hissing wasp, filching the apples as they were peeled and quartered for the apple sauce, sticking a much soiled finger into the cake batter, licking it, and applying it again to the batter several times, in spite of Joyce’s protests. She seemed to know that her mother would not reprove her for anything she did to annoy Joyce tonight.