After Miss Joe Hill had gone out, Miss Lucinda remained at the window and restlessly tapped her knuckles against the sill.  The insidious spring sunshine, the laughter of the girls in the court below, the foolish happy birds telling their secrets under the new, green leaves, all worked together to disturb her peace of mind.

She resolutely turned her back to the window and took breathing exercises.  That was one of Miss Joe Hill’s sternest requirements—­fifteen minutes three times a day and two pints of water between meals.  Then she sat down in a straight-back chair and tried to read “The Power Through Poise.”  Her body was doing its duty, but it did not deceive her mind.  She knew that she was living a life of black deception; evidences of her guilt were on every hand.  Behind the books on her little shelf was a paper of chocolate creams; in the music rack, back to back with Grieg and Brahms, was an impertinent sheet of ragtime which Floss had persuaded her to learn as an accompaniment.  And deeper and darker and falser than all was a plan which had been fermenting in her mind for days.

In a fortnight the school term would be over.  Following the usual custom, Miss Lucinda was to go to her brother in the country and Miss Joe Hill to her sister for a week.  This obligation to their respective families being discharged, they would repair to the seclusion of a Catskill farmhouse, there to hang upon each other’s souls for the rest of the summer.

Miss Lucinda’s visits to her brother were reminiscent of a multiplicity of children and a scarcity of room.  To her the Inferno presented no more disquieting prospect than the necessity of sharing her bedroom.  She always returned from these sojourns in the country with impaired digestion, and shattered nerves.  She looked forward to them with dread and looked back on them with horror.  Was it any wonder that when a brilliant alternative presented itself she was eager to accept it?

Floss Speckert had gained her father’s consent to spend her first week out of school in New York provided she could find a suitable chaperon.  She had fallen upon the first and most harmless person in sight and besieged her with entreaties.

Miss Lucinda would have flared to the project had not a forbidding presence loomed between her and the alluring invitation.  She knew only too well that Miss Joe Hill would never countenance the proposition.

As she sat trying vainly to concentrate on her “Power Through Poise,” she was startled by a noise at the window, followed immediately by a dishevelled figure that scrambled laughingly over the sill.

“I came down the fire escape!” whispered the invader breathlessly, “Miss Joe Hill caught us making fudge in the linen closet, and I gave her the slip.”

“But Florence!” Miss Lucinda began reproachfully, but Floss interrupted her: 

“Don’t ‘Florence’ me, Miss Lucy!  You’re just pretending to be mad anyhow.  You are a perfect darling and Miss Joe Hill is an old bear!”