"Honestly, you aren't fond of them, are you?" asked Nance.
"Oh, it isn't that," apologized Molly. "But I think so many small pictures scattered over a big wall space are—well, rather tiring to the optic nerves."
Nance looked sad, but she had unbounded faith in Molly's opinions.
"What shall we do with this big empty wall space, then?" she asked, pausing in her unpacking to regard a sea of blue-gray cartridge paper with a critical eye.
At this juncture there came a light, timid tap, so faint, indeed, that it might have been the swish of a mouse's tail as he brushed past the door.
Molly paused in her contemplation of blank walls and listened.
"Did you hear anything, Nance?" she asked. "I thought I heard a tapping at our chamber door."
"Come in," called Nance briskly.
The door opened first a mere crack. Then the space widened and there stood on the threshold the diminutive figure of a little Japanese girl who by subsequent measurements proved to be exactly five feet one-half an inch in height. She was dressed "like white people," to quote Molly, that is, in a neat cloth suit and a straw turban, and her slanting black eyes were like highly polished pieces of ebony.
"I beg the honorable pardon of the young ladies," she began with a prim, funny accent. "I arrive this moment which have passing at the honorable home of young ladies. I not find no one save serving girl who have informing me of room of sleeping in. Honorable lady of the house, her you calling 'matronly,' not in at present passing moment. I feeling little frighting. You will forgive poor Otoyo?"