she ever sat in it, unless she had a cold or was otherwise ailing; the
drawing-room was always full of company, and Sara was the life of the
house. I used to peep in at the pretty room sometimes as I went up to
bed; there were few notes written at the inlaid escritoire, and the
handsomely-bound books were never taken down from the shelves. Draper,
Aunt Philippa's maid, fed the canaries and dusted the cabinets of china.
Sometimes Sara would trip into the room with one of her cronies for a
special chat; the ripple of their girlish laughter would reach us as Jill
and I sat together. 'Whom has Sara got with her this afternoon?' Jill
would say peevishly. 'Do listen to them; they do nothing but laugh. If
Fräulein had set her all these exercises she would not feel quite so
merry,' Jill would finish, throwing the obnoxious book from her with a
little burst of impatience.

I always pitied Jill for having to spend her days in such a dull room;
the furniture was ugly, and the windows looked out on a dismal back-yard,
with the high walls of the opposite building. Aunt Philippa, who was a
rigid disciplinarian with her young daughter, always said that she had
chosen the room 'because Jill would have nothing to distract her from her
studies.' The poor child would put up her shoulders at this remark and
draw down the corners of her lips in a way that would make Aunt Philippa
scold her for her awkwardness. 'You need not make yourself plainer than
you are, Jocelyn,' she would say severely; for Jill's awkward manners
troubled her motherly vanity. 'What is the good of all the dancing and
drilling and riding with Captain Cooper if you will persist in hunching
your shoulders as though you were deformed? Fräulein has been complaining
of you this morning; she seems excessively displeased at your
carelessness and want of application.' 'I know I shall get stupid, shut
up in that dull hole with Fräulein,' Jill would say passionately, after
one of these maternal lectures. Aunt Philippa was really very fond of