"Anxious to get through, you mean," laughed Kat, throwing down her weapon, and tumbling her dishevelled hair into a net. "Hollo, Kittie, your corners are swept cleaner'n mine." "Of course," answered Kittie complacently, and turning her broom right end up, in a spasm of housewifely care. "You better go to work and do yours over; that's in the bargain, isn't it, Bea?" "Work to be done well," said Bea, surveying Kat's corners with a critical eye. "And those are not clean; you've slipped right by them." "Just as well," asserted Kat, whisking her broom about and scattering the dust that disgraced a small corner over such extent of surface that it could not be noticed. "That's the way. What's the use of being so particular?" Bea shook her head and declared it wouldn't do, then gave to Kittie the overwhelming responsibility of keeping Kat straight, and departed for the kitchen. "Set the blind to lead the blind," laughed Kat, spinning about on her heels, and finishing up with a hearty hug for Kittie, and the penitent remark: "You are getting lots better than I, that's a fact; and I must begin to brush up and sober down, or I'll be the black sheep of the flock,--as if I wasn't always that. But you really are getting terrible good, Kittie; I've seen it for a long time and it makes me uncomfortable; spin around and be gay like you used to." "Nonsense," laughed Kittie, then looked sober, and sat down upon the stairs suddenly. "I'm not good, Kat, it isn't that; I don't know how to be; but some way, I can't be as terribly wild and gay as I used to be, there seems to be so much more to think about now, and seems to me we ought to help think as much as the others, and besides, I don't think we ought to be so wild any more; why, Kat, we're in our teens!" "Suppose we are, dear me!" cried Kat, standing off and surveying her sister with a sort of vague alarm, "what ever is the matter with this family? Olive is getting so pleasant, and wears ribbons, and you're not going to be wild any more, and have gone to thinking; you'll both die next thing, good people always die; and anyhow, my fun's all up. I never can be gay if you sit around so solemn and goody-goody;" and Kat rumpled up her hair and looked desperate. "The idea, what a speech!" exclaimed Kittie, looking as if her new resolutions had received a shock. "As if I couldn't be sensible without being goody-goody, whatever that is. Pick up your broom and don't worry, my dear. I'll never die of being too good."