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The smirky, impudent look left Judith's face.

"We needn't stay here at all," continued Rosy. "Miss Christian might so happen to get tired of this here joke. She might so happen to want to go back to her own people, and we will go back, both of us, even if they are angry, if you play any pranks. Now you understand."

Judith nodded. "It's a nice opinion you have of me, Rose Latimer," she said. "What pranks would a poor girl like me be up to? You needn't fret about me and my morals, Rose Latimer, for I'm as straight as a die, I can tell yer."

She ran downstairs, utterly regardless of the dirty walls and the broken stairs. She flew along, leaping over obstacles, and clearing two or three stairs at a time in her headlong flight.

When her steps had died away Rosy looked at Christian. Christian's back was to her; she was standing by the window. She had not removed her hat and jacket. In her heart was a dull weight—the weight of absolute despair. Even Rosy, as she watched Christian and seemed to guess by a sort of instinct what she was feeling, began to find the adventure less adventurous, and even began to see a certain amount of good in the dressmaker's room where she usually sat, cozy and warm, machining long seams and turning out yards and yards of flouncings. Yes, even the dressmaker's room was better than this attic, with Christian, as Rosy expressed it, in a sulk.