Then there are a few wizardy things I do with a chafing dish, and lastly, and after all lastly should be firstly, is my genius for getting everything and everybody into a most hopeless mess." The girl moved impatiently at first, as if determined not to be evaded by that light mood, but sight of Katie, lying there so much as a child would lie, seemed to suggest how truly Katie might have spoken and she was betrayed into the shadow of a smile.
"I suppose there has never been a human being as gifted in balling things up as I am," meditatively boasted Kate.
"Now here you are," she continued plaintively.

"You want to go away.
Well, of course, that's your affair.

Why should you have to stay here--if you don't want to?
But in the twenty-four hours you've been here I presume I've told twenty-four unnecessary lies to my brother.

And if you do go away--as I admit you have a perfect right to do--it will put me in such a compromising position, because of those deathless lies that will trail me round through life that--oh, well," she concluded petulantly, "I suppose I'll just have to go away too." But the girl put it resolutely from her.

A wave of sternness swept her face as she said, with a certain dignity that made Katie draw herself to a position more adapted to the contemplation of serious things: "That's all very well.