But how should Nina remember the terrific difficulties of entrances and exits at Ursula’s hoyden stage of life; how to make them graceful and yet without any gawky preliminaries ... especially when your divinity was in the room, watching you, or understandingly not watching you.... It was much better when you were not romantically attached to anybody--then you just banged in and out, all anyhow--and much more successfully. Once, Nina herself was Ursula’s royalty.... Nina at seventeen was very lovely to a small twelve-year-old sister--the careless swagger of her walk and her clear gay laugh, and her established supremacy as captain of the school games ... white flannel shirt and loosely-knotted dark-green tie, and thick golden hair, hard-brushed to a door-knocker plait--like a well-groomed boy Nina was then, with such hard clean outlines that Ursula used to feel an ecstatic longing to follow them with the point of her finger.... “Dashing”--yes, it was the right word.... Only she could give you nothing from her cleanness and clearness--she walked right through your worship, cutting it.... And you began to crave for an aroma of more gracious tenderness; and there was Aunt Lavvy, ready to love you. You had worshipped her before, of course, but not separately--just one of the cantata. But _now_.... “You’ve got to tidy up for dinner, too, Nina!”--they didn’t dress for dinner at the Laburnums, unless people were invited--they “tidied up.” “You mind your own business, young woman. _I_ don’t have to scrape myself for hours with a pumice-stone!” “Well----” Ursula still dawdled; it was hateful leaving those two alone, with Nina’s air of suspended confidences. The queen dethroned and the reigning queen.... Ella Wheeler Wilcox.... “The Old Stage Queen.” And then Ursula suddenly saw the humorous impossibility of Nina, broken and bowed and faded from neglect.... “What’s the joke?” “There isn’t one. I say--I’ve got to go.” “Still?” “Oh--shut up!” Aunt Lavvy said: “What a pity the key of our door has been lost, isn’t it, Ursula? You know I always call it ‘our door.’ Because otherwise we might be paying calls on each other all day long.” She had noticed how the child grudged the minutes spent away from her. “Yes.” Ursula was demure, but a little breathless. After she had gone, Nina said, in the relaxed tone of one to another when a third has left the room: “How exactly alike all flappers are!” “There’s a great deal in Ursula,” protested Aunt Lavvy, in affectionate championship. “There’s a great deal in every flapper,” Nina declared, with a flash of observation--“too much! If Ursula played more games, she wouldn’t be so rude and touchy and loving and excitable and pert and untidy and sulky----” “Oh, Nina, Nina, what a lot of hard adjectives to pelt one little sister! Let me add a few nice ones. Ursula is honest, loyal, truthful----”