"I was only just going to try it sometimes, for fun. When a girl is as tall as I am, it's ridiculous to see her with a plait flapping down her back. I'm sure I look older than either Viola or Dorrie. Most people would take me for eighteen." Katrine was staring anxiously at herself in the glass. "I'm not going to be treated here like a junior. They needn't begin it." "Oh, you'll settle them all right, I dare say!" answered Gwethyn abstractedly. She was calculating the capacities of the top drawer, and, moreover, she was accustomed to these outbursts on the part of her sister. Katrine put the hairpins, not on the dressing-table, but in a handy spot of her right-hand drawer, where she could easily get at them. It was absurd of Gwethyn to make such a fuss, so she reflected. A girl of only fifteen cannot possibly enter into the feelings of one who is nearly grown up. She preserved a rather distant manner at supper. It would not be dignified to unbend all at once to strangers. Gwethyn, always too hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, was talking to her next neighbour, and evidently eliciting much information; an unrestrained chuckle on her part caused Mrs. Franklin to cast a glance of surprise at that particular portion of the table. By bedtime both the new-comers were feeling serious; they would not for the world have confessed to home-sickness, but Katrine observed that she hoped vessels bound for Australia never blundered into German mines, and Gwethyn said she had seen in one of the papers that there was an outbreak of enteric among the troops in Egypt, and she wondered if it were in Hereward's regiment; neither of which remarks was calculated to raise their spirits. The beds had spring mattresses, and were quite as comfortable as those at home. By all ordinary natural laws the girls, tired with their journey, ought to have slept the slumbers of the just immediately their heads touched their pillows. Instead of doing anything so sensible, they lay talking until they were both so excited and so thoroughly wideawake that sleep refused to be wooed. Hour after hour they tossed and turned, counting imaginary sheep jumping over gates, repeating pieces of poetry, and trying the hundred-and-one expedients that are supposed to be infallible brain lullers, but all with no effect. Outside, owls were hooting a continual dismal concert of "twoo-hoo-hoo!" "I like owls from a natural history point of view," groaned Katrine, "and I've no doubt they're only telling one another about fat mice and sparrows; but I wish they'd be quiet and not talk! They're far more disturbing than trams and taxis." "Talk of the peace of the country! I should like to know where it is!" agreed Gwethyn, turning her pillow for the fourteenth time. "There's a cock crowing now, and a dog barking!" "It's impossible to sleep a wink," declared Katrine, jumping out of bed in desperation, and drawing aside the window curtain. "I believe it's getting light."