kind, you know. She will have to go back to Desborough Park when her
mother returns, I suppose. The flat is only rented for six months. I
wish"--She stopped to take off the lid of the tea-kettle and peer
earnestly in. "When a kettle boils, little bubbles come to the top, don't
they? I have got a notebook where I write down interesting little details
of that sort. They will come useful by and by, if I have to live in a flat
by myself. I shouldn't be able to keep a regular servant."

"But a regular servant would spoil it all, even if you could afford it,"
said Rose, with sparkling eyes. "We couldn't come out here and get tea
like this, if you had a servant, Pauline.".

"She would have to stand in the passage, wouldn't she?" said Pauline,
looking round the tiny kitchen, with a laugh. "But how would you like to
get tea for yourself every day, little Rose? Clare seems to like it,
though. Her mother wanted Mrs. Richards to stay with us all day, but Clare
begged that she might go at three o'clock. And Clare is maid-of-all-work
after that. It seems to come natural to her to know what kitchen things
are meant for. Now, if you will make the tea, we will go back to your
aunt. This kettle is certainly boiling at last."

Rose carefully measured the tea into the pretty Japanese teapot. Pauline
leant against the dresser and watched her with her hands clasped at the
back of her head. Pauline was not pretty,--her features were badly cut and
her skin was sallow,--but she made a pretty picture standing there. Her
dress of ruddy brown was made in a graceful, artistic fashion, and was
just the right colour to set off her dark eyes and dark, wavy hair. Rose
thought her friend beautiful. She had adored her from the first day they
met, when Pauline was junior English governess at Miss Jephson's
Collegiate School for Young Ladies at Brighton, and Rose was a frightened,