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unreasonable.
    â€œI won’t be home for dinner,” she said brusquely. “I’m taking my Spanish lesson—I probably won’t be home until late. Sorry I didn’t know you were coming, so I could make plans.”
    Anice was sweetly understanding.
    â€œOh, but you mustn’t worry about me , Cousin Phyllis,” she protested eagerly. “I don’t want to be the slightest bother to you. I’ll pick up something to eat before I come home.”
    Phyllis said something she hoped sounded pleasant and escaped. She could not know that as the door closed behind her, Anice stood quite still, an odd expression on her lovely little heart-shaped face.
    â€œNow why, when she’s got this great big place,” said Anice thoughtfully to herself, “should I bother running around trying to find a place that would cost me two orthree hundred dollars a month? With housing conditions so acute, Cousin Phyllis shouldn’t mind sharing her place. And I’m sure she won’t—not when she has time to think it over. Of course, I know it bothers her a little, not being able to have Terry here to spend the night when she wants him. But after all, if my being here keeps her from committing a sin—well, then surely it’s my duty to stay! And maybe I can shame her into stopping drinking. And she smokes too much, too—a nasty, filthy habit.”
    She moved about the apartment, setting everything in order, and when she had finished she nodded to herself.
    â€œYes, it’s nothing less than my duty to stay here and help Cousin Phyllis to mend her morals,” she said at last, and grinned impishly, and added, “Besides, it ought to be fun!”
    Her carefully trained conscience whispered that she had lied about the price she had secured for Grannie’s shabby little down-at-heels cottage. But it was never hard for Anice to soothe that seldom aroused conscience.
    â€œAfter all,” she reminded it, “I didn’t say I only got a thousand dollars—I just said I got a thousand dollars, and didn’t mention that it was a thousand dollars and more! So it wasn’t a lie, at all.”
    After which she felt much better and got herself lovingly and carefully into one of her smart new frocks, tilted a silly little hat over one eye, and gathered up her bag and gloves, assuring herself that her shiny new checkbook was in place. She was a little disappointed that none of Phyllis’ clothes fit her; she liked one of Phyllis’ hats, but decided that her own was new and more becoming. And, too, it was soothing to know that her own clothes were of better quality than Phyllis’.
    It added a new sparkle to her eyes to realize that if she stayed on there in Phyllis’ apartment, she wouldsave herself a good deal of money that could go to the further adornment of her person.
    â€œOf course—” she smacked down the faint conscience the moment it tried to raise its head “—I’ll pay my share by doing the housework and keeping her clothes in order and doing the cooking. I like to cook, and I’m a good housekeeper, and there’s very little work to keeping a place like this nice!”
    She barely restrained a little skip as she went to the door, and paused to look back at the big living room with its flowery prints and its hand-blocked linen floor-length draperies.
    â€œIt’s a darling place!” she told herself happily. “I’m going to love living here!”

CHAPTER FIVE
    F OR A WEEK, P HYLLIS CAME HOME each evening to find an exhausted Anice deploring the lack of available apartments in New York. An Anice who explained almost tearfully how she had simply walked and walked and walked, and nobody had anything at all to rent. And Phyllis, who had been doing a good bit of searching on her own account, was beginning to be a little desperate.
    It was again her turn to sleep on the living room couch, and as she