"You're an angel, Mary Lou," Susan said affectionately.

"Oh, angel!" Miss Lancaster laughed wearily, but she liked the
compliment for all that. "I'm not much of an angel," she said with a
sigh, throwing her hat and coat down beside Susan's, and assuming a
somewhat spotted serge skirt, and a limp silk waist a trifle too
small for her generous proportions. Susan watched her in silence,
while she vigorously jerked the little waist this way and that,
pinning its torn edges down firmly, adjusting her skirt over it, and
covering the safety-pin that united them with a cracked patent-
leather belt.

"There!" said Mary Lou, "that doesn't look very well, but I guess
it'll do. I have to serve to-night, and I will not wear my best
skirt into the kitchen. Ready to go down?"

Susan flung her book down, yawned.

"I ought to do my hair--" she began.

"Oh, you look all right," her cousin assured her, "I wouldn't
bother."

She took a small paper bag full of candy from her shopping bag and
tucked it out of sight in a bureau drawer. "Here's a little sweet
bite for you and me, Sue," said she, with childish, sweet slyness,
"when Jinny and Ma go to the lecture to-night, we'll have OUR little
party, too. Just a little secret between you and me."

They went downstairs with their arms about each other, to the big