game. Gracie and I will play it, and you are going to--to--well, you
are going to be the game."

Genevieve Maud nodded solemnly, well satisfied. She was in it, anyhow.
What mattered the petty details? "'Going to be the game,'" she echoed,
as was her invariable custom, with the air of uttering an original
thought.

Helen Adeline went on impressively.

"It's called the simple life," she said, "and grown-up folks are
playing it now. I heard the minister an' mamma talking about it las'
week for hours an' hours an' hours. They give up pomps an' vanerties,
the minister says, an' they mus'n't have luxuries, an' they mus' live
like nature an' save their souls. They can't save their souls when
they have pomps an' vanerties. We thought we'd try it with you first,
an' then if we like it--er--if it's nice, I mean, p'r'aps Grace an' I
will, too. But mamma is sick, an' you've had too many things an' too
much 'tention, so it's a good time for you to lead the simple life an'
do without things."

Genevieve Maud, gazing into her sister's face with big, interested
eyes, was vaguely, subconsciously aware that the new game might halt
this side of perfect content; but she was of an experimental turn and
refrained from expressing any scepticism until she knew what was
coming. In the mean time the eyes of her sister Grace Margaret had
roamed disapprovingly over Genevieve Maud's white dress, the blue sash
that begirded her middle, the rampant bow on her hair. Katie had put
on all these things conscientiously, and had then joyfully freed her
mind from the burden of thought of the child for the rest of the