Ulyth's abstraction was so marked that her room-mate could not fail to notice it.
"What's the matter with you to-night?" she asked. "I've never seen you so glum before. Have you been getting into a row with Teddie?"
"I'm all right. One can't always be talking, I suppose," returned Ulyth rather huffily. "Some people go on like a perpetual gramophone."
"Meaning Corona Margarita Mitchell, I suppose? As you like, O Queen! I'll shut up if my babble offends the royal ears. There! Don't look so tragic. I don't want to make myself a nuisance. But all the same it's depressing to see you looking like a mixture of Hamlet and Ophelia and Iphigenia and—and—Don Quixote. Was he tragic too? I forget."
"Hardly," said Ulyth, smiling in spite of herself.
"Well, I get mixed up among history and literature, can't always remember which is real and which is make-up. It's a fact. I put down Portia as history in my exercise yesterday, and said the story of the Spanish Armada was told by Chaucer. Now you're laughing, and you look more like Ulyth Stanton. Sit down on this bed. There! Open your mouth and shut your eyes, and see what the king will send you!"
Rona was fumbling in her drawer as she spoke. She turned round, seized her friend boisterously and forced her on to the bed, then, holding a hand over her eyes, crammed a chocolate almond into her mouth.
"Rona! What are you doing?" protested Ulyth, shaking herself free. "Where did you get this chocolate?"
Rona pulled a face expressive of mingled secrecy, delight, and triumph.
"Rats!" she chuckled enigmatically. "Little girls shouldn't ask questions."