"I should like to see one of the gardeners at home looking at us the way Priddy does----" "Or Miss Harriet either for that matter--she's only a sort of forewoman----" "--applewoman----" "--tomatoes----" "--that's all she is really----" "--nothing else----" Louie laughed outright. Another gurgle had come from the bathroom, and Earle reappeared. Her announcement that the water was now cold added to the general sense of wrong. "Not even enough hot water!" "Scarcely a drop, ever!----" "Odious!" "Then will somebody come into my cubicle and rub me--not you, B Minor." ("Just give a squint out of the window, Elwell.") ("It's all right. Her lights are out. Lovey's too.") "Well, I _won't_ have a cold bath, to please Lovey or anybody else!" Nor did Louie want one. She had risen. She moved to the window that looked out over the courtyard yew--the window from which watch was kept to see when Miss Harriet and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith retired--and yawned. In the middle of her yawn she suddenly laughed again. "Good gracious!" she thought. It was too amusing. Suddenly Richenda Earle, who also was standing by the window, spoke to her. Evidently Richenda did not think she had been fairly treated by the meeting. "Do _you_ think they ought to ask me to?" she complained. Louie turned. "To ask you to what?" "To complain to Miss Harriet--me, the only Scholarship girl." Louie shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. "Oh, they won't complain to Miss Harriet!" "No--but one doesn't like to refuse things----" Earle said in injured tones. Before Louie would have had time to reply to this, had she thought of replying to it, a diversion occurred. Nobody had heard steps approaching, but all at once the door opened, and Authority, in the person, not of Miss Harriet, but of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith herself, stood looking in. The hubbub ceased as the boiling of a kettle ceases when cold water is poured in. Several of the conspirators rose to their feet; Burnett Minor, making no bones about it, bolted behind a box. Great is even the look of Authority; it was almost a superfluity when Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked in measured tones from the doorway: "What is the meaning of this?" Already the tails of two dressing-gowns had vanished out of the other door. "What is the meaning of this?" Mrs. Lovenant-Smith asked again. Then she looked round to see on whom to fasten her displeasure. Louie saw her look, and instantly fathomed its purpose. She and Richenda Earle stood by the window, as it were the dramatic centre of some Rembrandtesque composition to which all else was merely contributory. The Scholarship girl was going to get into a row. She, Louie, had lived for years among rows; and was leaving anyway on the morrow. Before the "Miss Earle" had passed Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's lips Louie had stepped forward. "We've been waiting for our baths," she said.