“But somebody’s got to think of stoves and roofs and rats and such, or there’d be no living in any old house,” I reminded her, practically.  “My dear girl, don’t you realize that this thing isn’t all beer and skittles?”

Alicia wrinkled her white forehead.

“Consider me, a hardy late-summer plant forced to uproot and transplant myself to a soil which may not in the least agree with me.  Why, this means changing all my fixed habits, to trot off to live in an old house that is probably haunted by the cross-grained ghost of a lady of ninety-nine!”

“If I were a ghost, you’d be the very last person on earth I’d want to tackle, Sophy,” remarked Alicia, dimpling.  “And as for that new soil, why, you’ll bloom in it!  You—­well, Sophy dear, up to now you have been root-bound; you’ve never had a chance to grow, much less to blossom.  Now you can do both.”

I who was confidential secretary to the Head, looked at the girl who was admittedly the worst file-clerk on record; and she looked back at me, nodding her bright head with young wisdom.

“I hope,” she said, wistfully, “that there’ll be all sorts of lovely things in your house, Sophy,—­old mirrors, old books, old pictures, old furniture, old china.  Lord send you’ll find an attic!  All my life I’ve day-dreamed of finding an attic that’s been shut up and forgotten for ages and ages, and discovering all sorts of lovely things in all sorts of hiding-places.  When I think my day-dream may come true for you, Sophy, it almost reconciles me to the pain of parting from you; though what on earth I’m to do without you, goodness only knows!” She was sitting on my bed, kimonoed, slippered, and braided.  And now she looked at me with a suddenly quivering chin.

“Alicia,” said I, “ever since I discovered that there’s no mistake about that lawyer’s letter—­that Hynds House is unaccountably, but undoubtedly mine and I’ve got to live in it if I want to keep it—­it has been borne in upon me that you are just about the worst file-clerk on earth.  You’re a navy-blue failure in a business office.  Business isn’t your motif.  Now, will you resign the job you fill execrably, and accept one you can fill beyond all praise—­come South with me, share half-and-half whatever comes, and help make that old house a happy home for us both?”

“Don’t joke.”  Her lips went white.  “Please, please, Sophy dear, don’t joke like that!  I—­well, I just couldn’t bear it.”

“I never joke,” I said indignantly.  “You little goose, did you imagine for one minute that I contemplated leaving you here by yourself, any more than I contemplate going down there by myself, if I can help it?  Stop to think for a moment, Alicia.  You have been like a little sister to me, ever since you were born.  And—­I’m alone, except for you—­and not in my first youth—­and not beautiful—­and not gifted.”

At that she hurled herself off my bed and cried upon my shoulder, with her slim arms around my neck.  Those young arms were beginning to make me feel wistful.  If things had been different—­if I had been lovely like the Scarletts, instead of looking like the Smiths—­there might have been—­