Just then a shadow appeared in the doorway, and Katherine looked down to see a shrinking little figure with pipestem legs standing on the top step.

“Hello!” Katherine called gaily, from her airy perch.  “Are you our neighbor from Avernus?  Do you want anything?” she added, for the girl was swallowing nervously, and seemed to be on the verge of making a request.

“Will somebody please show me how to make a bed?” faltered the visitor in a thin, piping voice.  “It isn’t made, and I don’t know how to do it.”

“Daggers and dirks!” exploded Katherine, nearly falling off the shelf under the stress of her emotion.

“What’s the matter with the rest of the folks in Avernus—­can’t they make beds either?” asked Miss Armstrong, surveying the wisp of a girl in the doorway with an intent, solemn gaze that sent her into a tremble of embarrassment.

“My ‘tenty’ hasn’t come yet,” she faltered in reply.

“Who’s your councilor?”

“I don’t know; she isn’t there.”  The voice broke on the last words, and the blue eyes overflowed with tears.

Katherine leaped from the shelf to the bed and down to the floor.  “I’ll come over and help you make your bed,” she said kindly.

“All right,” said Miss Armstrong, nodding gravely.  “You go over with her and I’ll find out who’s councilor in Avernus and send her around.”

To herself she added, when the other two were out of earshot, “Baby’s away from it’s mother for the first time, and it’s homesick.”

“Poor thing,” said Oh-Pshaw, who had overheard Miss Armstrong’s remark.

“She’ll get over it,” replied Miss Armstrong prophetically.

If Miss Armstrong was a novelty to the tenants of Bedlam, the councilor in Ponemah also seemed an odd character to the three girls she was to chaperon—­only she was a much less agreeable surprise.  She was a stout, fussy woman of about forty with thick eye-glasses which pinched the corners of her eyes into a strained expression.  She greeted the girls briefly when they presented themselves to her, and in the next breath began giving orders about the arrangement of the tent.  The beds must stand thus and so; the washstand must be on the other side from where it was; the mirror must stay on this side.  And she must have half of the swinging shelf for her own; she could not possibly do with less; the others could get along as best they might with what was left.

“We’re supposed to divide the shelf up equally,” announced Bengal Virden, who had begun to look upon Miss Peckham—­that was her name—­with extreme disapproval from the moment of their introduction.  Bengal was a girl whose every feeling was written plainly upon her face; she could not mask her emotions under an inscrutable countenance.  Her dislike of Miss Peckham was so evident that Migwan and Gladys had expected an outbreak before this; but Bengal had merely stood scowling while the beds were being moved about.  With the episode of the swinging shelf, however, she flared into open defiance.