Mona gulped down her tears. "No--o, I--I--it was Millie Higgins' fault. She's been and got a dress----" And then she suddenly felt ashamed of herself, and ashamed to repeat anything so petty, and she gulped again, and this time she swallowed her bad temper too. "No--I'm--I'm 'set fair' now, father!" she added, and, though there was a choke in her voice, as though her temper was rather hard to swallow, there was a smile in her eyes, and in a very little while granny's feather-bed was shaken up as soft and smooth as ever granny herself could have made it, and the bed was made up. And then by degrees everything in the room was got into place just as its mistress liked it, so that when granny came up later on and saw her new room, she exclaimed aloud in pleased surprise: "Why, it looks like home already," she cried, "and that's our Mona's doing, I know!" CHAPTER X. Mona sat reading, curled upon the window seat in her bedroom. She spent a great deal of her time there. Sometimes sewing, but more often either reading, or looking out at the view. For a few days she had been busy making curtains for her window, and a frill to go across the top, and, as granny had firmly refused to buy wide pink ribbon to fasten back the curtains, Mona had hemmed long strips of some of the print left over from her own pink dress. But all this was done now, and Mona was very proud of her handiwork. The frill was a little deeper on one side than the other, but that was a trifle. Mona thought that the whole effect was very smart; so smart, indeed, that she sometimes wished that her window was in the front of the house, so that people going up and down the hill might see it. "But I s'pose one can't have everything," she concluded, with a sigh. Granny's window, which did look out on the hill, was anything but smart, for she had had neither time nor strength to make her curtains, and Mona had not offered to make them for her. Granny had gone up to Lucy's that very afternoon, and taken them with her, hoping to work at them a little while she talked. She often went up to sit with Lucy. Perhaps she found it dull at home, with Mona always shut up in her own room. Lucy's garden delighted her too. She had none herself that could compare with it. In the front there was a tiny patch close under her window, and there was a long strip at the back, but only a very few things had the courage to grow there, for the wind caught it, and the salt sea-spray came up over it, and blighted every speck of green that had the courage to put its head out. Lucy's garden and Lucy's kitchen both delighted her. She said the kitchen was more cheerful than hers, but it was really Lucy's presence that made it so. Lucy was always so pleased to see her, so ready to listen to her stories, or to tell her own, if granny was too tired to talk. She always listened to her advice, too, which was quite a new experience to Mrs. Barnes.