nearly giggled. Not, of course, that she felt in the least like giggling.
It must have been habit. Years ago, when they had stayed awake at night
talking, their beds had simply heaved. And now the porter's head,
disappearing, popped out, like a candle, under father's hat...The giggle
mounted, mounted; she clenched her hands; she fought it down; she frowned
fiercely at the dark and said "Remember" terribly sternly.

"We can decide to-morrow," she said.

Constantia had noticed nothing; she sighed.

"Do you think we ought to have our dressing-gowns dyed as well?"

"Black?" almost shrieked Josephine.

"Well, what else?" said Constantia. "I was thinking--it doesn't seem quite
sincere, in a way, to wear black out of doors and when we're fully dressed,
and then when we're at home--"

"But nobody sees us," said Josephine. She gave the bedclothes such a
twitch that both her feet became uncovered, and she had to creep up the
pillows to get them well under again.

"Kate does," said Constantia. "And the postman very well might."

Josephine thought of her dark-red slippers, which matched her dressing-
gown, and of Constantia's favourite indefinite green ones which went with
hers. Black! Two black dressing-gowns and two pairs of black woolly
slippers, creeping off to the bathroom like black cats.