"But you can't stand my poky aunts, and Grandma's jokes, eh?"
"Oh, no," cried Helen aghast. "Both the Misses Armstrong have been very kind and Mrs. Armstrong is delightful—but, of course, I get homesick." She stopped suddenly for that was a subject upon which she dared not dwell.
The other girl stared. "My goodness. I would love to know what homesickness is like, just for once. I've never been away from home except for a visit somewhere in the holidays, and then I was always having such a ripping time, that the thought of going home made me sick."
She sat for a little while, again looking steadily at Helen. "You certainly are pretty," she exclaimed. "There's no doubt about that."
"I beg your pardon!" said Helen amazed, and doubting if she had heard aright.
"Oh, nothing, never mind!" cried the other with a laugh. She tore off her costly hat and flung it on top of the table. Then she threw herself backwards on the bed staring at the ceiling. She made such a complete wreck of the starched pillow covers and the prim white bedspread that were the pride of Miss Armstrong's heart, that Helen shuddered.
"Well, I don't wonder at you getting homesick here. These ceilings are such a vast distance away they make you feel as if you were a hundred miles from everywhere. I remember sleeping in this room once, when there was an epidemic of scarlet fever or something among the Armstrong kids. All the well ones were dumped on our aunts, after the custom of the family, and I was sent off with a dozen others and we were marooned upstairs, like a gang of prisoners, the girls in this room and the boys in Grandma's. Six in a bed—more or less. I remember we used to lie awake in the early morning before Aunt Elinor would let us get up, and study the outburst of robins and grapes on the ceiling. And one day we got the boys in with their toy guns and tried to shoot the tails off the birds. Cousin Harry Armstrong hit one. Do you see the ghastly remains of that bird without the tail? That was the one. I never hit anything, but I tried hard enough. I am responsible for the bangs on the ceiling. Each one tells when I missed my aim."
Helen laughed all unawares. She was surprised at herself. It was so long since she had laughed she thought she had forgotten how.
"That robin proved to be the Albatross for us," continued Leslie Graham, sitting up again, "for Aunt Elinor found out about it, and we had no more good luck from that day till we went home." She sprang up.
"Dear me! here I am jabbering away, and Mother must be gone." She caught up her hat, dislodging a couple of books that went over on the floor. "Oh, dear, I've knocked something over." She did not make any motion to pick them up, however. "Mother says I always leave a trail behind me."