"Oh, nothing, never mind!" cried the other with a laugh. She tore off her costly hat and flung it on top of the table. Then she threw herself backwards on the bed staring at the ceiling. She made such a complete wreck of the starched pillow covers and the prim white bedspread that were the pride of Miss Armstrong's heart, that Helen shuddered. "Well, I don't wonder at you getting homesick here. These ceilings are such a vast distance away they make you feel as if you were a hundred miles from everywhere. I remember sleeping in this room once, when there was an epidemic of scarlet fever or something among the Armstrong kids. All the well ones were dumped on our aunts, after the custom of the family, and I was sent off with a dozen others and we were marooned upstairs, like a gang of prisoners, the girls in this room and the boys in Grandma's. Six in a bed--more or less. I remember we used to lie awake in the early morning before Aunt Elinor would let us get up, and study the outburst of robins and grapes on the ceiling. And one day we got the boys in with their toy guns and tried to shoot the tails off the birds. Cousin Harry Armstrong hit one. Do you see the ghastly remains of that bird without the tail? That was the one. I never hit anything, but I tried hard enough. I am responsible for the bangs on the ceiling. Each one tells when I missed my aim." Helen laughed all unawares. She was surprised at herself. It was so long since she had laughed she thought she had forgotten how. "That robin proved to be the Albatross for us," continued Leslie Graham, sitting up again, "for Aunt Elinor found out about it, and we had no more good luck from that day till we went home." She sprang up. "Dear me! here I am jabbering away, and Mother must be gone." She caught up her hat, dislodging a couple of books that went over on the floor. "Oh, dear, I've knocked something over." She did not make any motion to pick them up, however. "Mother says I always leave a trail behind me." She stood before the glass arranging her hat, a radiant figure. Helen looked at her wistfully. There was nothing this girl wanted, surely, that she could not have; and yet she seemed so restless and dissatisfied. "Do you go out much?" she asked. "Not very much," said Helen. "My school keeps me busy." She did not say that she knew so very few young people she had no one to go with. Miss Graham turned to the mirror again. She seemed embarrassed. "The lake's lovely here for paddling. Only the season is nearly over. Have you been out on the water much?" She did not look at the girl as she asked the question. "No," said Helen, and the other faced round and stared at her. "I don't know how to paddle and I am rather afraid of a canoe." "Do you mean to say you've never been on the lake since you came here?" asked Leslie Graham, standing and staring with a hat-pin in her mouth.