“You’ve only to consult Webster,” was the dignified reply.  “I looked your name up in the dictionary the day I first heard it.  Ethel means noble, but Ethelinda means noble snake.  I suppose nobody ever calls you just Inda,” she added meaningly.

Ethelinda’s eyes flashed, but she had no answer for this queer girl who seemed to have the Dictionary and the Peerage and no telling how many other sources of information at her tongue’s end.

Again the dressing went on in silence.  Mary finished first, all but a hook or two which she could not reach, and which she could not muster up courage to ask Ethelinda to do for her.  Finally, gathering up her armful of roses, she went across the hall to ask Dorene’s assistance.

“Why, of course!” she cried, opening the door wide at Mary’s knock.  “You poor child!  Think of having a room-mate who is such a Queen of Sheba she couldn’t do a little thing like that for you!”

“But I didn’t ask her,” Mary hurried to explain, eager to be perfectly honest.  “I had just made such a mean remark to her that I hadn’t the courage to ask a favour.”

“You!” laughed Cornie.  “I can’t imagine a good natured little puss like you saying anything very savage to anybody.”

“But I did,” confessed Mary.  “I wanted to hurt her feelings.  I fairly ached to do it.  I should have said something meaner still if I could have thought of it quick enough.  Isn’t it awful?  Only the second day of the term to have things come to such a pass!  Everything we do seems to rub the other’s fur up the wrong way.”

“I’d ask Madam to change me to some other room,” said Dorene, but Mary resented the suggestion.

“No, indeed!  I’ll not have it said that I was such a fuss-cat as all that.  I’ll make myself get along with her.”

“Well, I don’t envy you the task,” was Cornie’s rejoinder.  “I never can resist the temptation to take people down when they get high and mighty.  I heard her telling one of the girls at the breakfast table that she’d never ridden on a street-car in all her life till she came to Washington.  She made Fanchon take her across the city in one instead of calling a carriage as they always do.  They have a garage full of machines at home, and I don’t know how many horses.  She said it in a way to make people who had always ridden in public conveyances feel mighty plebeian and poor-folksy, although she insisted that street-cars are lots of fun.  ‘They give you a funny sensation when they stop.’  Those were her very words.”

“Well, of all things!” cried Mary, then after a moment’s silent musing, “It never struck me before, what different worlds we have been brought up in.  But if a street-car ride is as much of a novelty to her as an automobile ride would be to me, I don’t wonder that she spoke about it.  I know I’d talk about my sensations in an auto if I’d ever been in one, and it wouldn’t be bragging, either.  Maybe all our other experiences have been just as different,” she went on, her judicial mind trying to look at life from Ethelinda’s view-point, in order to judge her fairly.