“The way of the Transgresser is hard”—­Bible.

I come now to the momentous day of my return to my dear home for Christmas.  Father and my sister Leila, who from now on I will term “Sis,” met me at the station.  Sis was very elegantly dressed, and she said: 

“Hello, Kid,” and turned her cheek for me to kiss.

She is, as I have stated, but 20 months older than I, and depends altogether on her clothes for her beauty.  In the morning she is plain, although having a good skin.  She was trimmed up with a bouquet of violets as large as a dishpan, and she covered them with her hands when I kissed her.

She was waved and powdered, and she had on a perfectly new Outfit.  And I was shabby.  That is the exact word.  Shabby.  If you have to hang your entire Wardrobe in a closet ten inches deep, and put it over you on cold nights, with the steam heat shut off at ten o’clock, it does not make it look any better.

My father has always been my favorite member of the family, and he was very glad to see me.  He has a great deal of tact, also, and later on he slipped ten dollars in my purse in the motor.  I needed it very much, as after I had paid the porter and bought luncheon, I had only three dollars left and an I. O. U. from one of the girls for seventy-five cents, which this may remind her, if it is read in class, she has forgoten.

“Good heavens, Barbara,” Sis said, while I hugged father, “you certainly need to be pressed.”

“I daresay I’ll be the better for a hot iron,” I retorted, “but at least I shan’t need it on my hair.”  My hair is curly while hers is straight.

“Boarding school wit!” she said, and stocked to the motor.

Mother was in the car and glad to see me, but as usual she managed to restrain her enthusiasm.  She put her hands over some Orkids she was wearing when I kissed her.  She and Sis were on their way to something or other.

“Trimmed up like Easter hats, you two!” I said.

“School has not changed you, I fear, Barbara,” mother observed.  “I hope you are studying hard.”

“Exactly as hard as I have to.  No more, no less,” I regret to confess that I replied.  And I saw Sis and mother exchange glances of signifacance.

We dropped them at the Reception and father went to his office and I went on home alone.  And all at once I began to be embittered.  Sis had everything, and what had I?  And when I got home, and saw that Sis had had her room done over, and ivory toilet things on her dressing table, and two perfectly huge boxes of candy on a stand and a Ball Gown laid out on the bed, I almost wept.

My own room was just as I had left it.  It had been the night nursery, and there was still the dent in the mantel where I had thrown a hair brush at Sis, and the ink spot on the carpet at the foot of the bed, and everything.

Mademoiselle had gone, and Hannah, mother’s maid, came to help me off with my things.  I slammed the door in her face, and sat down on the bed and raged.