you will be glad to share so soon in your father's
vexations."

"Yes," said Erica, pushing back the hair from her forehead, and
giving herself a kind of mental shaking. "I am glad of that.
After all, they can't spoil the best part of our lives! I shall go
into the garden to get rid of my bad temper; it doesn't rain now."

She struggled to her feet, picked up the little fur hat which had
fallen off, kissed her mother, and went out of the room.

The "garden" was Erica's favorite resort, her own particular
property. It was about fifteen feet square, and no one but a
Londoner would have bestowed on it so dignified a name. But Erica,
who was of an inventive turn, had contrived to make the most of the
little patch of ground, had induced ivy to grow on the ugly brick
walls, and with infinite care and satisfaction had nursed a few
flowers and shrubs into tolerably healthy though smutty life. In
one of the corners, Tom Craigie, her favorite cousin, had put up a
rough wooden bench for her, and here she read and dreamed as
contentedly as if her "garden ground" had been fairy-land. Here,
too, she invariably came when anything had gone wrong, when the
endless troubles about money which had weighed upon her all her
life became a little less bearable than usual, or when some act of
discourtesy or harshness to her father had roused in her a
tingling, burning sense of indignation.

Erica was not one of those people who take life easily; things went
very deeply with her. In spite of her brightness and vivacity, in
spite of her readiness to see the ludicrous in everything, and her