our pennies for them when we were little tots back in Kansas.  We didn’t eat the pop-corn, that is I didn’t.  It was the flutter and thrill I wanted, that comes when you’ve almost reached the bottom of the box, and know the next grab will bring the prize into your fingers.  I was always hoping I might find one of those little rings with a red setting that I could pretend was a real garnet.  No matter if it did always turn out to be nothing but a toy soldier or a tin whistle, there was always some kind of a surprise, and that delicious uncertain creepy feeling first.”

“Well, you don’t always draw a prize in your pop-corn when you’re drawing room-mates, I can tell you that!” announced Cornie emphatically.

“I was at a school the year before I came here, where I had to room with a girl who almost drove me to distraction.  She was a mild, modest little thing, who, as Cowper says: 

     “’Would not with a peremptory tone
       Assert the nose upon her face her own.’

Yet she’d do things that would provoke me beyond endurance.  Sometimes I could hardly keep from choking her.”

“What kind of things for instance?” asked Mary.

“Well, for one thing, and it does seem a little one when you tell it, we had about a thousand photographs, more or less, perched around on the mantel and walls.  Essie was so painfully modest that she couldn’t bear to undress with them looking at her, so she’d turn their faces to the wall, and then next morning she’d be so slow about getting down to breakfast that there wouldn’t be time to turn them back.  There my poor family and friends would have to stay with their faces to the wall all day as if they were in disgrace, unless I went around and turned them all back myself.

“Then she was such a queer little mouse; didn’t really come out of her hole and get sociable until after dark.  As soon as the lights were out and we were in bed, she’d want to talk.  No matter how sleepy I was, that was the time to tell all her troubles.  She was so humble and respectful in asking my advice that I couldn’t throw a pillow at her and shut her up, so there she’d lie and talk in a stage whisper till after midnight.  Then it was like pulling teeth to get her up in the morning.  She took to setting an alarm clock for awhile, to rouse her early and give her half an hour to wake up in.  It never made the slightest difference to her, but always wakened me.  Finally I unscrewed the alarm key and hid it.  She was so sensitive that I couldn’t scold and fuss about things.  Now with Dorene here, I simply gag her when she talks too much, shut her in the closet when she gets in my way, and scalp her when she doesn’t do as she is bid.”

Without any reason for forming such a mental picture of her prospective room-mate, Mary had imagined her to be a blue-eyed, golden-haired little creature, with a sort of wax-doll prettiness:  a girl made to be petted and considered and shielded like a delicate flower.  The type appealed to her.  Independent and capable herself, she was prepared to be almost motherly in her care for Ethelinda’s comfort.  With this preconceived notion it was somewhat of a shock when she went back to her room and found the real Ethelinda being ushered into it.