"Yes," said Ermengarde, in an abstracted voice. She was standing by the window. She had not attempted to undress.
Hudson generally helped the little girls to prepare for the night, but as she was particularly busy reducing Chaos to order downstairs, Marjorie had said they could get on quite well alone for this one evening. She now came to Ermengarde, to ask her to unfasten a knot in her dress.
"And why don't you take off your own things, Ermie?" she said.
"There's no particular hurry," said Ermengarde.
"But aren't you dreadfully tired?"
"No. I did not get up at four o'clock this morning."
"Oh, what fun we had waking father!" began Marjorie, "If you had only seen Eric; and father's face when first he opened his eyes. I do believe—why, what's the matter, Ermie, have you a headache?"
"No; how you do worry one, Maggie! Go to bed, and try to stop talking; I want to think, and to be let alone. I'll come to bed when I feel inclined."
A torrent of words came to the tip of Marjorie's tongue, but she restrained them. It was Ermie's custom sometimes to be very snappy and uncommunicative. She concluded the wisest policy was to let her sister alone, and to go to sleep herself as fast as possible.
Accordingly she knelt for a few moments by her bedside in her little white nightdress, and then tumbled into it, and with a happy sigh went into the land of dreams.