CHAPTER V.
ONE DAY.
"Well, surely there never was such a pokey family," exclaimed Ernestine, lounging into the room where the girls were gathered, one bleak dreary morning, early in November. "Nothing ever happens, any more than as if we were in back-woods. Kittie, I'll change seats with you."
"I suppose you will," returned Kittie, keeping her chair and frowning over her slate and book. "You'll always change if you get the best by it; get out of my light will you."
"I wish you'd shut the door, Ernestine," growled Kat over the top of a bandage bound round her head and face; "I wish your tooth was ready to jump out of your mouth, and some one would leave the door open on you."
"I'd try and set you a good example, by being polite at least," laughed Ernestine, who really never could be cross or blue, very long at a time. "How grum we are; what's the matter Bea?"
"I've an awful headache," answered Bea, who shared in the general depression, and was considerably ruffled over not being able to set a puff straight on her skirt. "Be quiet, please, and sit down; it was still enough before you came in."
"So I should think, from the way you all look like tomb-stones. Nobody looks peaceful, but Jean, and she's asleep; and Olive is the only one that looks natural, because she always looks solemn and cross, no matter what's up."
Olive turned from the window with a jerk. She had such a cold, that she could not go down to the store, and her face was swollen most unbecomingly.
"Perhaps if you had a little more sense, you might be able to look at least reasonably solemn sometimes," she said sharply.