be equally so, I am displeased; displeased and exceedingly annoyed.
However, we will let the matter rest where it is until you have heard
from your uncle, I should advise your saying nothing to your sisters
until his reply comes. I am afraid you will find it disappointing."

Pauline flushed. "I never intended telling Hilary anything about it
unless I had good news for her; as for Patience--"

Out in the hall again, with the study door closed behind her, Pauline
stood a moment choking back a sudden lump in her throat. Would Uncle
Paul treat her letter as a mere piece of school-girl impertinence, as
father seemed to?

From the sitting-room came an impatient summons. "Paul, will you never
come!"

"What is it, Hilary?" Pauline asked, coming to sit at one end of the
old sofa.

"That's what I want to know," Hilary answered from the other end.
"Impatience says you've been writing all sorts of mysterious letters
this afternoon, and that you came home just now looking like---"

"Well, like what?"

"Like you'd been up to something--and weren't quite sure how the
grown-ups were going to take it," Patience explained from the rug
before the fire.

"How do you know I have been writing--anything?" Pauline asked.