Blue and Red ran out of the kitchen.  When they got into the next room they clasped one another and shook with silent laughter.  As the door between the rooms did not shut tightly, they adjured one another, by dances and gestures, not to laugh loud.  Blue danced round the table on her toes as a means of stifling her laughter.  Then they both ran to the foot of the attic stair and gripped each other’s arms very tight by way of explaining that the situation was desperate, and that one or other must control her voice sufficiently to call Eliza.

The dining-room they were in was built and furnished in the same style as the kitchen, save that here the wood was painted slate-colour and a clean rag carpet covered the floor.  The upper staircase, very steep and dark, opened off it at the further end.  All the light from a square, small-paned window fell sideways upon the faces of the girls as they stretched their heads towards the shadowed covert of the stairs.

And they could not, could not, speak, although they made gestures of despair at each other and mauled each other’s poor little arms sadly in the endeavour to prove how hard they were trying to be sober.

If any one wants to know precisely what they were laughing at, the only way would be to become for a time one of two girls to whom all the world is a matter of mutual mirth except when it is a matter of mutual tears.

Although it seemed very long to them, it was, after all, only a minute before Blue called in trembling tones, “Eliza!”

“Eliza!” called Red.

“Eliza!  Eliza!” they both called, and though there was that in their voices which made it perfectly apparent to the young man in the next room, that they were laughing, so grand was their composure compared with what it had been before, that they thought they had succeeded admirably.

But when a heavy foot was heard overhead and an answering voice, and it was necessary to explain to Eliza wherefore she was called, an audible laugh did escape, and then Blue and Red scampered upstairs and made the communication there.

It spoke much for the strength and calibre of character of the girl who had so lately come into this family that a few minutes later, when the three girls entered the kitchen, it was Eliza who walked first, with a bearing equal to that of the other two and a dignity far greater.

The young man, who had been fidgeting with the stove, looked up gravely to see them enter, as if anxious to give his lesson; but had any one looked closely it would have been seen that his acute gaze covered the foremost figure with an intensity of observation that was hardly called for if he took no other interest in her than as a transient pupil in the matter of stove dampers.