“Of course,” assented the elder sister briefly and not at all sympathetically. In her heart she was thinking that curtains wouldn’t make any difference. What was the use of trying to do anything, anyway? Suppose the beautiful stranger who had been so sure she would make her home lovely could see her now. What would she think? She drew a deep sigh. “I guess maybe I better go to bed,” said Louise suddenly, blinking to hide a tendency to tears. It was somehow all so different from what she had expected. She had thought it would be almost like having mother back, and it wasn’t at all. Cornelia seemed strange and difficult. “Yes,” said the father, coming up from the cellar, where he had been putting the erratic furnace to bed for the night; “you and Harry better get right up to bed. You have to get up so early in the morning.” “Perhaps you’d like to come, too,” said Louise, turning to Cornelia with one more attempt at hospitality. “You know you have to sleep with me; that is I sleep with you.” She smiled apologetically. “There isn’t any other room, you know,” she explained as she saw the look of dismay on Cornelia’s face. “I wanted to fix up the linen-closet for me, but father couldn’t find another cot yet. Harry sleeps on one cot up in a little skylight place in the third story that was only meant for a ladder to go up to the roof. Carey has the only real room on the third floor, and there aren’t but two on the second besides the little speck of a bathroom and the linen-closet.” A sudden realization of the trouble in the little sister’s eyes and voice brought Cornelia somewhat to her senses. “That’s all right, chicken,” she said, pinching the little girl’s cheek playfully. “We won’t fight, I guess. I’m quite used to a roommate, you know.” Louise’s face bloomed into smiles of hopefulness. “Oh, that will be nice,” she sighed. “Are you coming to bed now?” “You run along, Louise,” put in her father. “I guess Nellie and I will have a bit of a talk before she comes up. She’ll want to know all about mother, you know.” The two children withdrew, and Cornelia tried to forget herself once more and bring her reluctant thoughts to her immediate future and the task that was before her. “What is the matter with mother?” she asked suddenly, her thoughts still half impatient over the interruption to her career. It was time she understood more definitely just what had come in to stop her at this important time of her life. She wished that mother herself had written; mother never made so much of things, although of course she didn’t want to hurt her father by saying so.