"Dimples need a master," she said, "besides, they only show when you
smile, and I don't believe Amelia smiles very often!"

She sat down and took up a brush. The picture was nearly done, but she
found touches to be added here and there. There might be a stray
lock--there, like that. And a little bit more shade under the chin, and
the wistful droop of the mouth relieved, oh, a very little bit! Amelia
looked so serious.

"Poor little thing! Well, it's a serious matter to be a dream-child,
with not an ounce of good red blood in your veins."

Laura Ann meant to slip back after they had started for the station, on
the last day, and hang the picture in the little sunny dining-room. She
did not want the girls to know there was a picture. But still--a new
thought had begun to obtrude itself unwelcomely. Was painting Amelia's
portrait a breach, too, of the Compact? She had undertaken it as a
little "offering" to Mrs. Camp, to show her own individual gratitude for
her own share of the dear little green cottage all these beautiful
weeks--T.O. had said Mrs. Camp had longed for a picture. But the fact
that it had taken many patient hours of work "unto others," was not to
be overlooked. If it had broken the rules of the Wicked Compact, and she
went back to the B-Hive without letting the girls know of it--oh, hum!
of course that would be another "wicked compact"! She would have to let
them know--and she didn't want to let them know--oh, dear!

Suddenly Laura Ann dropped her paints and gave herself up to laughter.
She had remembered that only T.O.--Thomasia O.--would be left now in the
B-Hive! For all the rest had broken the Compact. Thomasia O., living all