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Ella spent the afternoon of her sisters' departure in praiseworthy fashion. She acted up that is to say to the _role_, she had chosen to adopt. She prepared her lessons perfectly, she practised the most uninteresting of her piano exercises for an hour and a half; then she went up to her own room and looked out her oldest and shabbiest clothes, to see if she could not find anything in want of repair among them. It was not easy to do so. Stevens, who was an excellent needlewoman, kept Ella's things by Madelene's directions in perfect order, and it took some hunting on the girl's part, before she succeeded in finding a stocking or two with incipient holes, or a skirt which looked as if it would not be the worse for a new braid round the edge.
On these she set to work, huddling herself up in shawl, for it was very cold, and sitting on the straightest-backed and hardest chair in her room.