"Walk right in," said Mrs. Ayres, and Sylvia followed her into the sitting-room, which was quite charming, with a delicate flowered paper and a net-work of green vines growing in bracket-pots, which stood all about. There were also palms and ferns. The small room looked like a bower, although it was very humbly furnished. Sylvia sat down. "You always look so cool in here," she said, "and it's a warm morning for so early in the season." "It's the plants and vines, I guess," replied Mrs. Ayres, sitting down opposite Mrs. Whitman. "Lucy has real good luck with them." "How is Lucy this morning?" Mrs. Ayres wrinkled her forehead again. "She's in bed with a sick headache," she said. "She has an awful lot of them lately. I'm afraid she's kind of run down." "Why don't you get a tonic?" "Well, I have been thinking of it, but Dr. Wallace gives such dreadful strong medicines, and Lucy is so delicate, that I have hesitated. I don't know but I ought to take her to Alford to Dr. Gilbert, but she doesn't want to go. She says it is too expensive, and she says there's nothing the matter with her; but she has these terrible headaches almost every other day, and she doesn't eat enough to keep a sparrow alive, and I can't help being worried about her." "It doesn't seem right," agreed Mrs. Whitman. "Last time I was here I thought she didn't look real well. She's got color, a real pretty color, but it isn't the right kind." "That's just it," said Mrs. Ayres, wrinkling her forehead. "The color's pretty, but you can see too plain where the red leaves off and where the white begins." "Speaking about color," said Mrs. Whitman, "I am going to ask you something." "What?" "Do you really think Miss Farrel's color is natural?" "I don't know. It looks so." "I know it does, but I had it real straight that she keeps some pink stuff that she uses in a box as bold as can be, right in sight on her wash-stand." "I don't know anything about it," said Mrs. Ayres, in her weary, gentle fashion. "I have heard, of course, that some women do use such things, but none of my folks ever did, and I never knew anybody else who did." Then Sylvia opened upon the subject which had brought her there. She had reached it by a process as natural as nature itself. "I know one thing," said she: "I have no opinion of that woman. I can't have. When I hear a woman saying such things as I have heard of her saying about a girl, when I know it isn't true, I make up my mind those things are true about the woman herself, and she's talking about herself, because she's got to let it out, and she makes believe it's somebody else." Mrs. Ayres's face took on a strange expression. Her sweet eyes hardened and narrowed. "What do you mean?" she asked, sharply.