CHAPTER XX.
THE TURN OF THE WHEEL.
Sallie Marks had, indeed, received a royal welcome from her friends. They were as glad to see her as if she had just returned from a long voyage. Now they poked the fire and made fresh tea and petted and caressed her until her pale, near-sighted eyes were quite watery and she was obliged to wipe the moisture from her glasses.
"We'll make out the winter here, girls," she assured them. "It may take a week to get the house in order, but we can put up with a little discomfort to have O'Reilly's to ourselves. If they would only strip off this bilious paper and lay a few mattings! The plumbing is better than it was at Queen's, and the heating arrangements, too."
The room was really very comfortable what with the fire in the grate and the heat pouring up the register.
"It was a defective flue that made old Queen's go under," observed Katherine sadly, as if she were speaking of a dear friend who had lately passed into another life. "I am afraid her heating apparatus was a little second class."
"Speak no evil of the dead," admonished her sister Edith.
"Requiescat in pace," said Sallie in a solemn voice.
"La reine est morte; vive la reine," said Margaret.
"After all, we are really 'Queen's'" said Judy, "so let's be as happy as we can. Where are those letters, Sallie?"