The change of instruments, as the girls said, took place Monday morning. Bea awoke, to find her bed-posts ornamented variously, with a dish-pan, a flaunting rag and two scrupulously neat towels, while there was a sound of revelry in the lower hall, which would indicate that the twins were up, and at their new branch of work, with a vigor which novelty always imparts to labor. Not that there was anything so novel to a broom or dust-pan, but they were so tired of their work, that Bea's really seemed delightful and easy and much to be envied.
"You must have been anxious to get to work," said that sister, coming down the stairs with her post ornaments, and interrupting a lively skirmish, where brooms flew around through the air, with a cheerful disregard for the swinging lamp, or any one's head.
"Anxious to get through, you mean," laughed Kat, throwing down her weapon, and tumbling her dishevelled hair into a net. "Hollo, Kittie, your corners are swept cleaner'n mine."
"Of course," answered Kittie complacently, and turning her broom right end up, in a spasm of housewifely care. "You better go to work and do yours over; that's in the bargain, isn't it, Bea?"
"Work to be done well," said Bea, surveying Kat's corners with a critical eye. "And those are not clean; you've slipped right by them."
"Just as well," asserted Kat, whisking her broom about and scattering the dust that disgraced a small corner over such extent of surface that it could not be noticed. "That's the way. What's the use of being so particular?"
Bea shook her head and declared it wouldn't do, then gave to Kittie the overwhelming responsibility of keeping Kat straight, and departed for the kitchen.
"Set the blind to lead the blind," laughed Kat, spinning about on her heels, and finishing up with a hearty hug for Kittie, and the penitent remark: "You are getting lots better than I, that's a fact; and I must begin to brush up and sober down, or I'll be the black sheep of the flock,—as if I wasn't always that. But you really are getting terrible good, Kittie; I've seen it for a long time and it makes me uncomfortable; spin around and be gay like you used to."
"Nonsense," laughed Kittie, then looked sober, and sat down upon the stairs suddenly. "I'm not good, Kat, it isn't that; I don't know how to be; but some way, I can't be as terribly wild and gay as I used to be, there seems to be so much more to think about now, and seems to me we ought to help think as much as the others, and besides, I don't think we ought to be so wild any more; why, Kat, we're in our teens!"
"Suppose we are, dear me!" cried Kat, standing off and surveying her sister with a sort of vague alarm, "what ever is the matter with this family? Olive is getting so pleasant, and wears ribbons, and you're not going to be wild any more, and have gone to thinking; you'll both die next thing, good people always die; and anyhow, my fun's all up. I never can be gay if you sit around so solemn and goody-goody;" and Kat rumpled up her hair and looked desperate.