Kittie and Kat rushed promptly in, and Mr. Dering spoke, indicating Olive by a wide flourish. "Ladies and gentlemen--I suppose I must represent the gentlemen:--Let me introduce you to my future book-keeper and business confidante." Olive lifted her eyes, as he bowed again, and first saw her mother's face so happy and pleased, then Ernestine's so full of something that was almost ridicule, and in an instant, without looking farther, her own darkened, and withdrawing her hand, she walked over to her accustomed corner, thinking bitterly, while they all commented and applauded. "There! now every one but mama, thinks I'm a fool, and they needn't be saying, 'how splendid' and 'oh! Olive,' for didn't Ernestine look as if she wanted to laugh, and as if she would be ashamed of me if I worked, even in papa's store. But I don't care what any of them say or think," and having turned bitterly against all the girls, merely because of the unconscious smile on Ernestine's astonished face, Olive crushed all the joy from her own face, and nearly all from her heart. CHAPTER V. ONE DAY. "Well, surely there never was such a pokey family," exclaimed Ernestine, lounging into the room where the girls were gathered, one bleak dreary morning, early in November. "Nothing ever happens, any more than as if we were in back-woods. Kittie, I'll change seats with you." "I suppose you will," returned Kittie, keeping her chair and frowning over her slate and book. "You'll always change if you get the best by it; get out of my light will you." "I wish you'd shut the door, Ernestine," growled Kat over the top of a bandage bound round her head and face; "I wish your tooth was ready to jump out of your mouth, and some one would leave the door open on you." "I'd try and set you a good example, by being polite at least," laughed Ernestine, who really never could be cross or blue, very long at a time. "How grum we are; what's the matter Bea?" "I've an awful headache," answered Bea, who shared in the general depression, and was considerably ruffled over not being able to set a puff straight on her skirt. "Be quiet, please, and sit down; it was still enough before you came in." "So I should think, from the way you all look like tomb-stones. Nobody looks peaceful, but Jean, and she's asleep; and Olive is the only one that looks natural, because she always looks solemn and cross, no matter what's up." Olive turned from the window with a jerk. She had such a cold, that she could not go down to the store, and her face was swollen most unbecomingly. "Perhaps if you had a little more sense, you might be able to look at least reasonably solemn sometimes," she said sharply. "Oh, mercy," cried Ernestine, with her gay laugh, far more tantalizing than the sharpest words. "If having sense would make me look like you, I'd never want it,--never." Olive jumped from her seat with a force that knocked the chair over, and startled the whole company.