after listening half an hour to their laughing repartee and their
ridiculous discussions as to the arrangement of their pictures and
bric-a-brac. "I've been looking forward all morning to her coming. Every
time I think of her I have the same excited, creepy feeling that I used
to have when I opened a prize pop-corn box. My little brother and I used
to save all our pennies for them when we were little tots back in
Kansas. We didn't eat the pop-corn, that is _I_ didn't. It was the
flutter and thrill I wanted, that comes when you've almost reached the
bottom of the box, and know the next grab will bring the prize into your
fingers. I was always hoping I might find one of those little rings with
a red setting that I could pretend was a real garnet. No matter if it
did always turn out to be nothing but a toy soldier or a tin whistle,
there was always some kind of a surprise, and that delicious uncertain
creepy feeling first."

"Well, you don't always draw a prize in your pop-corn when you're
drawing room-mates, I can tell you _that_!" announced Cornie
emphatically.

"I was at a school the year before I came here, where I had to room with
a girl who almost drove me to distraction. She was a mild, modest little
thing, who, as Cowper says:

"'Would not with a peremptory tone
Assert the nose upon her face her own.'

Yet she'd do things that would provoke me beyond endurance. Sometimes I
could hardly keep from choking her."

"What kind of things for instance?" asked Mary.