“Janice!”

“O gemini!” cried the owner of that name, springing off the bed and beginning to unfasten her gown,—­an example promptly followed by her room-mate.

“Art thou dressing, child?” called the voice, after a pause.

“Yes, mommy,” answered Janice.  Then she turned to her friend and asked, “Shall I wear my light chintz and kenton kerchief, or my purple and white striped Persian?”

“Sufficiently smart for a country lass, Jan,” cried her friend.

“Don’t call me country bred, Tibbie Drinker, just because you are a modish city girl.”

“And why not thy blue shalloon?”

“’T is vastly unbecoming.”

“Janice Meredith!  Can’t thee let the men alone?”

“I will when they will,” airily laughed the girl.

“Do unto others—­” quoted Tabitha.

“Then I will when thee sets me an example,” retorted Janice, making a deep curtsey, the absence of drapery and bodice revealing the straightness and suppleness of the slender rounded figure, which still had as much of the child as of the woman in its lines.

“Little thought they get from me,” cried Tabitha, with a toss of her head.

      “’Tell me where is fancy bred,
      In the heart or in the head?’”

hummed Janice.  “Of course, one does n’t think about men, Mistress Tabitha.  One feels.”  Which remark showed perception of a feminine truth far in advance of Miss Meredith’s years.

“Unfeeling Janice!”

“’T is a good thing for the oafs and ploughboys of Brunswick.  For there are none better.”

“Philemon Hennion?”

“‘Your servant, marms,’” mimicked Janice, catching up a hair brush and taking it from her head as if it were a hat, while making a bow with her feet widely spread. “’Having nothing better ter do, I’ve made bold ter come over ter drink a dish of tea with you.’” The girl put the brush under her arm, still further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—­which quickly became a genuine inability to speak from laughter.

“Janice, thee should turn actress.”

“Oh, Tibbie, lace my bodice quickly, or I shall burst of laughing,” breathlessly begged the girl.

“Janice,” said her mother, entering, “how often must I tell thee that giggling is missish?  Stop, this moment.”

“Yes, mommy,” gasped Janice.  Then she added, after a shriek and a wriggle, “Don’t, Tabitha!”

“What ails thee now, child?  Art going to have an attack of the megrims?”

“When Tibbie laces me up she always tickles me, because she knows I’m dreadfully ticklish.”

“I can’t ever make the edges of the bodice meet, so I tickle to make her squirm,” explained Miss Drinker.