It was impossible not to feel more interest in the room now that it could be imagined in its pretty new dress, and the discussion of how it should be arranged and decorated occupied an hour out of a dreary wait. The sisters had slept the night before at a boarding-house, and had hurried to the flat directly after breakfast, so as to be ready to receive the furniture at ten o'clock as agreed. At eleven o'clock there was no sign of the vans; but no one expects furniture-vans to be punctual within an hour or two, and until noon the girls managed to possess themselves in patience, and to find amusement in wandering from room to room. But when one o'clock drew near the matter became serious. They had brought a tea-basket with them, but there were no chairs on which to sit, no table to hold the cups and saucers. They were growing tired, and were longing to get to work while daylight lasted, and to have a bed to sleep on before night fell. It was two o'clock before the first van arrived, and seven before the men departed, leaving the two young mistresses to thread their way between stacks of furniture, unopened crates, and boxes of luggage. There was no room for a servant to sleep in the flat, and the charwoman who was engaged to help could not come until the following day, so it was hopeless to try to do more than get one bedroom in tolerable order. By Hope's forethought the necessary blankets and linen had been packed in one box and plainly labelled, so preparations were soon made, and by eight o'clock the tired workers were already longing for bed. Downstairs in the basement was a public dining-room where dinner could be obtained for a shilling a head; but they were too dishevelled and footsore to feel inclined to appear in public, so they refreshed themselves instead with more tea, more cakes, more dried-up sandwiches. Philippa leant back in her chair and sighed heavily as she looked first at her roughened hands, then at the hopeless disorder by which she was surrounded. "I used to dream," she said slowly--"I used to dream of coming up to London. Father seemed so often on the eve of doing something great, and I used to imagine what it would be like if the book really turned out as he expected, or the picture made his name famous. He would have brought us to town, and we should have been rich, and every one would have wanted to know us--" "I know! So have I. `Beautiful Miss Charringtons--the rage of the London season.' That's the kind of thing, isn't it? I'm not beautiful, of course, but I'm vivacious--that's my point. I can _espiegle_ fifty times better than Hope, though she is such a darling. You are very handsome, Phil, when you look pleasant; and Theo has the air of a princess in disguise. We are an interesting family. It seems hard lines that the world should not know us. We do seem slightly--just a little--what you might call _cornered_ up here."