She gave Ellen another warm, proud hug, and this time the child’s coolness melted a little.  She rubbed her immaculate cheek against her sister’s sleeve—­

“Good old Jo ...”

Thus they drove home at peace together.

The peace was shattered many times between that day and Christmas.  Ellen had forgotten what it was like to be slapped and what it was like to receive big smacking kisses at odd encounters in yard or passage—­she resented both equally.  “You’re like an old bear, Jo—­an awful old bear.”  She had picked up at school a new vocabulary, of which the word “awful,” used to express every quality of pleasure or pain, was a fair sample.  Joanna sometimes could not understand her—­sometimes she understood too well.

“I sent you to school to be made a little lady of, and here you come back speaking worse than a National child.”

“All the girls talk like that at school.”

“Then seemingly it was a waste to send you there, since you could have learned bad manners cheaper at home.”

“But the mistresses don’t allow it,” said Ellen, in hasty fear of being taken away, “you get a bad mark if you say ‘damn.’”

“I should just about think you did, and I’d give you a good spanking too.  I never heard such language—­no, not even at the Woolpack.”

Ellen gave her peculiar, alien smile.

“You’re awfully old-fashioned, Jo.”

“Old-fashioned, am I, because I don’t go against my Catechism and take the Lord’s name in vain?”

“Yes, you do—­every time you say ‘Lord sakes’ you take the Lord’s name in vain, and it’s common into the bargain.”

Here Joanna lost her temper and boxed Ellen’s ears.

“You dare say I’m common!  So that’s what you learn at school?—­to come home and call your sister common.  Well, if I’m common, you’re common too, since we’re the same blood.”

“I never said you were common,” sobbed Ellen—­“and you really are a beast, hitting me about.  No wonder I like school better than home if that’s how you treat me.”

Joanna declared with violence if that was how she felt she should never see school again, whereupon Ellen screamed and sobbed herself into a pale, quiet, tragic state—­lying back in her chair, her face patchy with crying, her head falling queerly sideways like a broken doll’s—­till Joanna, scared and contrite, assured her that she had not meant her threat seriously, and that Ellen should stop at school as long as she was a good girl and minded her sister.

This sort of thing had happened every holiday, but there were also brighter aspects, and on the whole Joanna was proud of her little sister and pleased with the results of the step she had taken.  Ellen could not only dance and drop beautiful curtsies, but she could play tunes on the piano, and recite poetry.  She could ask for things in French at table, could give startling information about the Kings of England and the exports and imports of Jamaica, and above all these accomplishments, she showed a welcome alacrity to display them, so that her sister could always rely on her for credit and glory.