Joanna never tired of listening on the evenings when five or six of the girls crowded round Phemie at the piano, to “try over bits,” – sometimes out of an operetta, at other times from the St. Matthew or the St. John Passion Music; for they all belonged to the Bach Choir and practised hard for the Easter performance in the Cathedral.

Then how serious, fresh and beautiful the Pringle girls looked. But always, after a time, Nora the youngest grew tired of not laughing: and she would introduce some absurd words or, with all the terrific complacency of a prima donna, some flowery musical phrase of her own; until at last the chiding gravity of the others was upset. Once “our Nora” started there was no stopping her, and from making subtly comic grimaces, she would grow wilder and wilder in her clowning till every one was in paroxysms, and there could be no more Bach that night.

Nora it was who discovered in some magazine the marvellous “bloom-bath” alleged to be the secret of Mrs. Langtry’s beauty. And one afternoon when Joanna should have been at the Art School, she and Nora and Phemie in their petticoats, with shrieks of laughter and pain nearly steamed the skin off their faces. There was always some “ploy” forward with the Pringles, and Joanna, who in these ways had never been young before, entered into everything like a schoolgirl.

It was some time before she realized that the Pringle girls deeply hated the disorder and publicity of their home-life: that although outwardly they combined with zest to keep it going, each concealed a passionate longing for escape.

Phemie especially fretted for the day when she and her Jimmie would be able to afford marriage. And the existence the two had planned for themselves, was in every respect opposed to existence at Sans Souci. A dignified and beautiful quiet was essential.

“No ornaments hardly, as they only make work,” Phemie was discoursing one night as she showed Joanna the piled-up treasures of her “bottom-drawer.” “But lots of really lovely linen, all kept with lavender in among it. O! I do love the feel of good linen in my hands, don’t you, Joanna?”

And lifting out a folded linen sheet, elaborately hemstitched, Phemie sniffed its fragrance appreciatively with her little nose.

“And all the furniture real antique, – Jimmie has collected quite a lot – not ’arty,’ you know Joanna, but just old and good, – and chintz covered with roses in the drawing-room, – and all Jimmie’s books, and a Bechstein grand, – and the bedroom all white with pink roses on the wall-paper – roses I do love and adore. And at nights Jimmie and I will sit before the fire in perfect arm-chairs reading – and of course I’ll change every evening into a tea-gown – the most exquisite ever! – pink of the palest – and fearfully simple!”