“Never mind,” I said.  “I don’t care anything about Furnature.  I have other things to think about, Hannah; I want the school room Desk up here.”

“Desk!” she said, with her jaw drooping.

“I am writing now,” I said.  “I need a lot of ink, and paper, and a good Lamp.  Let them keep the Blue room, Hannah, for their selfish purposes.  I shall be happy in my work.  I need nothing more.”

“Writing!” said Hannah.  “Is it a book you’re writing?”

“A Play.”

“Listen to the child!  A Play!”

I sat on the edge of the bed.

“Listen, Hannah,” I said.  “It is not what is outside of us that matters.  It is what is inside.  It is what we are, not what we eat, or look like, or wear.  I have given up everything, Hannah, to my Career.”

“You’re young yet,” said Hannah.  “You used to be fond enough of the Boys.”

Hannah has been with us for years, so she gets rather talkey at times, and has to be sat upon.

“I care nothing whatever for the Other Sex,” I replied hautily.

She was opening my suitcase at the time, and I was surveying the chamber which was to be the seen of my Literary Life, at least for some time.

“Now and then,” I said to Hannah, “I shall read you parts of it.  Only you mustn’t run and tell mother.”

“Why not?” said she, pearing into the Suitcase.

“Because I intend to deal with Life,” I said.  “I shall deal with real Things, and not the way we think them.  I am young, but I have thought a great deal.  I shall minse nothing.”

“Look here, Miss Barbara,” Hannah said, all at once, “what are you doing with this whiskey Flask?  And these socks?  And—­you come right here, and tell me where you got the things in this Suitcase.”  I stocked over to the bed, and my blood frose in my vains.  It was not mine.

Words cannot fully express how I felt.  While fully convinsed that there had been a mistake, I knew not when or how.  Hannah was staring at me with cold and accusing eyes.

“You’re a very young Lady, Miss Barbara,” she said, with her eyes full of Suspicion, “to be carrying a Flask about with you.”  I was as puzzled as she was, but I remained calm and to all apearances Spartan.

“I am young in years,” I remarked.  “But I have seen Life, Hannah.”

Now I meant nothing by this at the time.  But it was getting on my nerves to be put in the infant class all the time.  The Xmas before they had done it, and I had had my revenge.  Although it had hurt me more than it hurt them, and if I gave them a fright I gave myself a worse one.  As I said at that time: 

     Oh, what a tangeled web we weive,
     When first we practice to decieve. 
     Sir Walter Scott.

Hannah gave me a horrafied Glare, and dipped into the Suitcase again.  She brought up a tin box of Cigarettes, and I thought she was going to have delerium tremens at once.