Miss Sutherland gave her room-mate a curious look, started to say something, changed her mind, and then got up from the bed and commenced to brush her hair back with nervous, impatient fingers.
“Don’t do that,” Dolly ejaculated suddenly, “can’t you see how much better you look when your hair lies loosely, so as to soften the outlines of your face? Here, give me the brush.”
She took the brush and comb from Miss Sutherland’s hand, pushed her down into a chair, and worked rapidly for two or three minutes. “There, the last bell will ring in a second and there is no time to fuss with it longer tonight, but can’t you see how much better it looks? You have such lovely hair that it is too bad to spoil it.”
“Mother always liked it combed straight back,” was all Miss Sutherland vouchsafed, speaking in a very distant tone.
Dolly flushed. Would she never learn to be less impetuous, she wondered, and to mind her own business? She felt like a child of three, whose ears had been soundly boxed.
“There was no need, Miss Sutherland, for you to change the arrangement of the sitting-room. Of course you have rights there as well as I.” The matter had better be settled now, Dolly thought, at once and forever. “I suppose red and pink would hardly answer in the same room at the same time, but we might agree on some third color together, and you fix part of the room and I part, or else you could have charge of the sitting-room one month and I the next. Which plan would you prefer?”
Dolly listened anxiously for the reply. It did not seem probable that her room-mate would feel that she could afford to buy new furnishings, and how could Dolly ever stand the red atrocities for five months, even if her beloved belongings were to be used for the other five?
There was no hesitancy in Miss Sutherland’s answer. “I can’t afford to waste any more money on things for my room, and I shan’t put up my mother’s work for those fools to laugh at, so I guess the sitting-room, as you call it, will likely stay as it is.”
Dolly felt uncomfortable. Miss Sutherland had a way of putting things that made one seem very small. It was clear, from the tone of her voice, that she worshiped her mother, and Dolly could see how the ridicule of her mother’s handiwork had hurt the girl’s feelings.
“You must remember,” she said gently, “that the sitting-room is as much yours as mine. Forgive me if I had seemed to take complete possession of it before you came.”