on a thing and have done with it. Why, I got a little spot of iron-rust on my white petticoat and Aunt Ruth harped on it for weeks. She was determined to find out when it was rusted and how—and I hadn’t the least idea. Really, Cousin Jimmy, when this had gone on for three weeks I thought I’d have to scream if she mentioned it again.”
“Any proper person would feel the same,” said Cousin Jimmy to the beef ham.
“Oh, any one of these things is only a pin-prick, I know—and you think I’m silly to mind it—but”
“No, no. A hundred pin-pricks would be: harder to put up with than a broken leg. I’d sooner be knocked on the head and be done with it.”
“Yes, that’s it—nothing but pin-pricks all the time. She won’t let Ilse come to the house—or Teddy, or Perry—nobody but that stupid Andrew. I’m so tired of him. She wouldn’t let me go to the Prep dance. They had a sleigh drive and supper at the Brown Teapot Inn and a little dance—everybody went but me—it was the event of the winter. If I go for a walk in the Land of Uprightness at sunset she is sure there is something sinister in it—she never wants to walk in the Land of Uprightness, so why should I? She says I have got too high an opinion of myself. I haven’t—have I, Cousin Jimmy?”
“No,” said Cousin Jimmy thoughtfully. “High—but not too high.”
“She says I’m always displacing things—if I look out of a window she'll trot across the room and mathematically match the corners of the curtains again. And it’s ‘Why—why—why’—all the time, all the time, Cousin Jimmy.”
“I know you feel a lot better now that you’ve got all that out of your system,” said Cousin Jimmy. “’Nother doughnut?”
Emily, with a sigh of surrender, took her feet off the stove and moved over to the table. The crock of dough-
