"It seems a comfortable house," Lallie suggested helpfully, "though 'tis a bit cold. Shall I set a match to the fire?" and Lallie flew to the little table--but the matches were gone.
"Pray don't," Miss Foster exclaimed, "I never start fires before the first of October."
"But if it's cold?" Lallie expostulated.
"That, Miss Clonmell, is my invariable rule."
"But it might be warm on the first of October."
"If it is warm on the first of October I shall certainly not have a fire."
"But we've had a fire every night since I came."
"I thought the room smelt rather stuffy," Miss Foster said coldly. "Won't you sit down, Miss Clonmell? You look so uncomfortable standing there."
Lallie sat down obediently, and unconsciously folded her hands in the devout attitude in which she had been wont to listen to the discourses of the Mother Superior in her convent.
"It would be well," Miss Foster continued, in a head voice, "if, before we go any farther, I explain to you how rigid--necessarily rigid--rules must be in a house of this description. It will save trouble and futile argument afterwards. You must see, yourself, that the arrangements in a College boarding-house containing fifty boys and over a dozen servants can't chop and change; the ordinary routine can't be relaxed as in an ordinary private house--though in the best managed private houses things are almost equally regular."