Being kind-hearted youngsters, they were honestly sorry for her in her evident unhappiness, and a glance at her black dress was always sufficient to check a too-sharp retort whenever she proved unusually apathetic and aggravating. But friendly relations could not be said to advance appreciably in the household, and Mrs. Folger and Miss Charity, looking on, grew seriously troubled by the situation. Fortunately, Barbee Thorne made up to everyone for her sister’s deficiencies. Such a rosy, sunny-tempered, affectionate baby was certainly never seen before, the family agreed unanimously. She was never sick or cross or unhappy. She adored everybody about her indiscriminately, and was as easy to amuse and take care of as a kitten or a puppy. To Erica, who had clung to a large collection of dolls until she was almost twelve, Barbee Thorne was a live doll, to be played with, dressed, and mothered without the uncomfortable consciousness that she was doing something unfitting the new dignity of her teens. Barbee was a distinct addition to the combined Folger households, as far as Erica was concerned. But Milly was a problem to be faced afresh with each new day. At school, whither she accompanied Erica and Tommy for the new term after Christmas, Milly speedily proved herself quick at her lessons and genuinely interested in the class work. During school hours she lost her sullen air, and seemed more content and like other children. She always had good marks in all her studies, and as a natural consequence soon found herself in high favor with Miss Minor, their teacher. With the rest of the pupils, however, she maintained that same unfriendly aloofness to which she clung so persistently at home. She made no friends, except Miss Minor, who often invited her home to tea after school was over, and occasionally, with Mrs. Folger’s permission, kept her overnight in her tiny, gray-shingled house on Pearl Street. From these visits Milly returned with a new softness in her black eyes, and a noticeable lessening of that peevish discontent which so irritated Tommy and Erica and worried their elders. But the change never lasted more than a few hours at most, when some unfortunate remark of one or another of the family would, all unintentionally, send her back into her sullen unfriendliness once more. “She’s like a clammy wet blanket round the house all the time,” Erica complained once, bitterly, to Tommy and Lilla Joy. “It doesn’t make a speck of difference whether you try to be nice to her or lose your temper and speak the truth about her manners. She’s just as disagreeable and anxious to get rid of your company and be alone, either way. Of course, I know she’s lost her mother and her home, and I’m sorry for her as I can be. I’d like to be friends, if she’d only let me. But when some one won’t meet you even a quarter of the way, what’s a person to do, anyhow?”