Soon Dorothy detected a strange odor of burning paper in the room.
"What is that?" she cried, in alarm. "Oh, Miss Vincent, the house must be on fire!"
Iris laughed long and loud.
"You delightful, innocent little goose!" she cried. "I am only curling my bangs with an iron heated over the gas, and I'm trying the tongs on paper to see that they are not too hot. I put my curls up in paper last night, but the horrid old things wouldn't curl because of the damp atmosphere, and—" She did not finish the sentence for Dorothy supplied it in her own mind—"her new friend was desirous of looking her best."
Harry was pacing impatiently up and down the breakfast-room when they entered.
"Good-morning, Miss Vincent; good-morning, Dorothy!" he exclaimed, eagerly; and Dorothy's heart gave a quick start, noting that he called her name last.
And another thing struck Dorothy quite forcibly. To her great surprise, she noticed that Iris spoke in quite a different tone from what she did when they were alone together in their own room.
There her accents were drawling, but now they were so wonderfully sweet and musical that Dorothy was struck with wonder. She never knew that a person could speak in two different tones of voice like this.
At the breakfast-table the conversation was bright and merry, though outside the rain had commenced to patter against the window-pane.
Dorothy felt strangely diffident, for only a small portion of the conversation was directed now and then to her, and Harry and Miss Vincent kept up such a lively chatter that there was scarcely an opportunity to get in a word edgewise.