"You may do anything you please, provided you don't injure the furniture."
"And it won't hurt your feelings?"
"No, you couldn't touch 'em. I'll sit here and wait till you have done."
Jane flung herself on a hard chair as she spoke, and drawing a long stocking out of her pocket, began to knit furiously.
Susy, who had about as much idea of measuring a room as she had of turning the heel of a stocking took her tapes out of her pocket and began an impossible task.
Jane watched her in silence for a moment or two, but Susy's futile attempts were too much for this deft, managing creature.
"Why don't you foot it?" she exclaimed. "My word, I never saw such a way to set to work. Here, you want the length of the room. I'll do it for you. Take your pencil and paper and jot down what I say. You haven't got any? That's a nice way of doing business. Well, then, I hope you have a good memory. I always measure a yard as I walk. Now, then, you count. Here I begin—one, two, three—are you counting?"
"No," said Susy; "I'm greatly obliged, but you confuse me awfully. I won't do any more measuring to-day; I shouldn't sleep for a week if I had to keep all that in my head. Some men must come down from Liberty's or Morris's. Antonia prefers Morris, she says he's the most chic."
"I don't know what you mean by chick," said Jane Macalister, "unless you allude in some mysterious way to the fowls; but I am glad you've got sense enough not to undertake what Providence has given you no aptitude for. Now, do you or do you not want to see the rest of the house? To a person like you, it's just like any other house, only nothing like so modern and nothing like so comfortable. There's a ghost in the tower——"
"A ghost," shrieked Susy; "I tremble at ghosts, I'm in terror at them; I won't go near the tower."