“Well, then”--Ursula spoke with even greater sweetness--“to protect myself from our Paying Guest.” [XVII] BUT in spite of these impertinences, Aunt Lavvy had the room, and Aunt Lavvy had the laugh of her. Moreover, now that the room was completely ready to sit in, and charming in its lilac and primrose tints as when their imaginations had planned it together, Aunt Lavvy did not sit in it. She sat downstairs with the others. She was more than usually convivial, and fragrant with content when somebody--Mrs. Maxwell or Nina or Lottie or Miss Roberts--asserted playfully that she could not be spared from them to go and sit in solitude. Tenacious in her desire to own a sitting-room, it now stood empty and unused in that packed house. Ursula, moping homeless about the stairs and landings of her home, was conscious of that sequestered oblong of space as though it were alive. She infected the rest of the household, who also became conscious of it--and, more than ever, of her. One or the other of them was wont to say to her, guiltily off-hand: “Oh, by the way, Ursula, there’s nobody in the dining-room for half an hour, if you want to be alone. I looked in on my way up,” and “Then I’ll tell Minnie not to disturb you.”... And behold Ursula, mooching disconsolately round the dining-room, a conspicuous captive to the misapprehension that she “liked to be alone sometimes.” “Look here,” Mr. Maxwell anxiously consulted his wife one evening. “What’s all this trouble about Ursula? I mean, she’s quite comfortable digging-in with Nina, isn’t she? Sisters, and all that. What’s she in such a deuced queer state about ever since----Damn it, it was the girl’s own suggestion to change rooms.” “Nina’s much easier to understand than Ursula. Nina’s much more like me--hot-tempered and says right out what’s in her mind and then it’s all over.” For it is a pet illusion with most people that they have exactly this popular sort of temper, and no other. Her husband drew closer. “Look here, Florrie. Hadn’t you better have a quiet talk with Ursula. A serious talk. You’re the girl’s mother. Get her to confide in you. I dunno--but it doesn’t seem ... natural to me, this fuss about not sleeping alone. Was there anything wrong going on when she----Well, what do you think?” His suggestion of an interview with Ursula in the spirit of “you’re the girl’s mother” was a parallel to his serious talk with Hal--“After all, I’m your father.”... Thus, twice in the last week or two, parenthood had ceased to be nominal. “What do you think, Florrie?” He had been nice to her ever since their reconciliation, and especially nice in insisting on her prior right to be consulted and even listened to with deference, on all subjects connected with the children. Mrs. Maxwell said slowly: “Yes--I’ll talk to Ursula. But I think I know.... A sort of shyness--some girls are like that. Oh, _I_ wasn’t--not I!” and she laughed heartily.