It was the first time Erica had ever been shut out from a share in anything that interested the twins, and the experience was not a pleasant one. She had made all sorts of good resolutions with regard to Milly, on coming to live at Aunt Callie’s, and she heroically tried to carry them out now, even in the face of this latest provocation. But she wished a dozen times a day for Tommy’s hot-headed championship. Tommy would never have let her feel left out and lonely, as she was beginning to feel more and often as the days passed. It was not that Lis himself ever showed any difference in his usual brotherly manner toward her; it was the fact of his sharing a secret with Milly, especially when he knew how Erica felt toward the other girl. She had finally come to persuade herself that it was almost disloyal of Lis; and out of school hours, she made her duties as nurse for Aunt Charity the excuse for keeping more and more out of both Milly’s and Lister’s way whenever she could. Milly certainly noticed Erica’s new course of action, even if Lis continued stupidly unobservant, and after a little while it seemed as if she were trying to retaliate in kind, for she began leaving more of the housework—the dusting, washing of dishes, and sweeping—to Erica, and slipping off with a book, or her sewing-box, to a certain corner of the big, raftered attic which had been given over to little Barbee for a playroom. Of course it was part of Milly’s duties to keep a watchful eye on her baby sister, and see that she did not get into trouble or annoy any of the grown-ups in the household. Still, when Barbee was entertaining her small self peacefully in the attic, it didn’t seem as if it were actually necessary for Milly to sit up there idly, day after day, and play nurse. There was no way in which the child could hurt herself, and there was certainly nothing she could break or destroy among the heavy chests, trunks, and discarded furniture that crowded the old garret. No, Erica decided, with a flash of indignant self-pity—and this was an emotion as novel to the girl as the conditions which had called it forth—Milly was paying her back in her own coin, and with interest added. Life had suddenly become for Erica Folger a strange, unfamiliar, miserable affair. Several weeks dragged by in this fashion, and then one evening Milly came in late for supper, her dark, fretful face so changed and softened by a sort of shy, triumphant happiness that everyone at the table involuntarily laid down spoons and forks and sat back to stare at her. It was Lis who broke the second of silence by jumping to his feet and rushing round to thump Milly heartily on the back as if she had been Tommy himself. “She liked ‘em?” he queried, unintelligibly to the rest of the household, who looked in amazement from Milly’s sparkling face to Lister’s, which had become, all of a sudden, equally radiant.