"I'll do the best I can for you, duck," said Joanna, "you shall have your bit of dancing—and anyways I've got a fine, big surprise for you when we're home."
"What sort of a surprise?"
"That's telling."
Ellen, in spite of her dignity, was child enough to be intensely excited at the idea of a secret, and the rest of the drive was spent in baffled question and provoking answer.
"I believe it's something for me to wear," she said finally, as they climbed out of the trap at the front door—"a ring, Joanna.... I've always wanted a ring."
"It's better than a ring," said Joanna, "leastways it's bigger," and she laughed to herself.
She led the way upstairs, while Mrs. Tolhurst and old Stuppeny waltzed recriminatingly with Ellen's box.
"Where are you taking me?" asked her sister, pausing with her hand on the door-knob of Joanna's bedroom.
"Never you mind—come on."
Would Mene Tekel, she wondered, have remembered to set the lamps, so that the room should not depend on the faint gutter of sunset to display its glories? She opened the door, and was reassured—a fury of light and colour leapt out—rose, blue, green, buff, and the port-wine red of mahogany. The pink curtains were drawn, but there was no fire in the grate—for fires in bedrooms were unknown at Ansdore; however, a Christmas-like effect was given by sprigs of holly stuck in the picture-frames, and a string of paper flowers hung from the bed-tester to the top of the big woolly bell-rope by the mantelpiece. Joanna heard her sister gasp.