played a part all her life, hadn't she? Maybe it was quite a shock to
her system to take a place amongst really good and simple folk!

She laughed a little shortly--then rose abruptly from her chair, and
began to walk up and down the room. The trouble was that the soft pedal
was getting unbearable. That air of awed hush and solemnity, morning,
noon and night, without anything to relieve it, was just a trifle too
drastic and sudden a change in life for her to accept calmly and swallow
in one dose without feeling any effects from it! If she could be
transported now for an hour, say, to the Roost, or Heligman's and the
turkey trot, or the Rivoli, or any old place--except Needley, Maine!

"Gee!" said Helena to herself. "If I don't break loose and kick the
traces over for a minute or two, I'll be clawing the bars of a dippy
asylum before I'm through--and just listen to the sweet, girlish
language I'm using--I'd like to bite something!"

She turned impulsively to the door, stepped out into the hall, and
called the Flopper from his room.

"Flopper, you go in there and stay with the Patriarch for awhile," she
ordered curtly. "I'm going down on the beach to yell."

"Yell?" inquired the Flopper, blinking helplessly.

"I'm going outside to yell--_yell._ You know what 'yell' means, don't
you?" she snapped.

"Swipe me!" observed the Flopper, gazing at her anxiously. "Skirts is
all de same--youse never know wot dey'll do next. Wot you wanter yell