ther had loved things clean! There had always been clean sheets often enough on Esther's bed. Esther used to pat the fresh linen gratefully with her delicate finger-tips. And Sheilah would pat it, too, and their eyes would meet in mutual appreciation. Oh, if only Esther had lived, then it wouldn't matter so much if Laetitia was a second Gretchen. Roddie could cheat, and Phillip could stay on indefinitely in the first grade, and still there would be joy left in living—justification for effort, recompense for disappointment, reward for perseverance. Oh well, she mustn't think about Esther. It was better for Esther not to have lived. She rose. She must make the gravy.
'Gosh! But it's sizzling in here!' exclaimed Laetitia when she entered the kitchen five minutes later.
She was what would be called a big girl for her age—full-hipped, round-busted, and not used enough yet to her recently acquired woman's contour to know how to dress to become it.
Sheilah let the 'gosh' pass without comment to-day. Laetitia heard a great deal of slang at school. Sheilah had never been able to make it clear to Laetitia why slang, and now, of late, scented powder and rouge, were undesirable in so young a girl. All the other girls at school, Laetitia argued, used all
