She just stood there and stared and stared at this other girl who was so like and yet so unlike herself.

The other girl had the same cloud of golden hair, only it was flying in every direction, not smoothly waved in the way it ought to lie; the same brown eyes, only they were full of bitterness and trouble, and a kind of fright in the depths of them; the same delicate lips, only they were set in hard lines as if the grim realities of life had been too close to her. She was wearing a soiled and torn flimsy dress of flowered material that was most unbecoming and a cheap old coat with all the buttons off or hanging by threads. Her hands were small, but they were swollen and red with the cold, and she shivered as she stood grimly there staring at her most unwelcome guest.

“Well,” she said with a final little shiver, opening the door a trifle wider, “I suppose you must be my twin sister! Will you come in?” Her voice was most ungracious, and she stood aside in the tiny hall to let Marjorie pass in.

“Oh! Are you—? That is—I didn’t know!” said Marjorie in confusion. Then she turned suddenly to the taxi driver and nodded brightly.

“It’s all right,” she said. “They still live here!”

“But they probably won’t for long,” added the other girl grimly.

“Oh, are you going to move? Then I’m glad I came before you did, for I might have had trouble finding you.”

“Yes,” said the other girl, unsmiling, “you probably would have.” Then she motioned toward a single wooden chair in the middle of the room. “Won’t you sit down? We still have one chair left, though I believe Ted is going to take it to the pawn shop this afternoon. There isn’t any heat here. Will you take cold?” There was something contemptuous in the tone of this hostile sister. Marjorie gave her a quick, troubled glance.

“Are you really my sister?”

“I suppose I must be,” said the other girl listlessly, as if it didn’t in the least matter. “There’s your picture up there on the mantel. Maybe you’ll recognize that. If you had waited till afternoon that would probably have been gone, too.”

Marjorie turned startled eyes toward the stark little high wooden shelf that ran across the narrow chimney over a wall register and saw her own photographed face in its silver frame smiling at her and looking utterly out of place in that bleak little room. She turned back to look at the other girl wistfully.

“You know, I didn’t even know I had a sister until day before yesterday!”

The other looked at her with hard, unbelieving eyes.

“That’s odd, isn’t it? How did that come about?”

“No one told me,” she answered sadly.

“Oh, yes? Then how did you find out?”

“I found a letter—from Moth—that is, from my adopted mother after she died. She left a letter to tell me about my birth family.”

“You mean Mr. and Mrs. Wetherill are both dead?” The tone was incredulous.

“Yes. I am alone in the world now, except for you—my own family.”

The other girl’s face grew very hard and bitter now.

“Oh!” she said shortly. “I wondered why you came after all these years, when you haven’t paid the slightest attention to us. Not even a Christmas card now and then! You, with your grand home and your aristocratic parents and your fine education! What could you possibly want with us? But I see it now. They have died and left you penniless, I suppose, after all their grand pretensions, and you have come back on us to live. Well, we’ll take you in, of course. Mother wouldn’t have it otherwise, but I’ll say it’s something like the end of a perfect day to have you turn up just now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Marjorie, distressed at once. “I ought to have telephoned to see if it was convenient, but I was so eager to find you. And you don’t at all realize anything about it. I’ve not come home to be a burden on you. I thought maybe I could spend Christmas with you. I know how you must feel. You are moving, and frightfully busy, but you’ll let me help, won’t you?”

“Moving!” sneered her sister. “Yes, we’d be moving right away today if we had any place to move to! And any money to move with! And anything to move! Christmas! I didn’t know there was such a thing anymore!” And suddenly she dropped down in a vacant chair, jerking her hands out from the ragged pockets of her old coat, put them up to her face, and burst into tears, sobbing until her slender body shook with the force of the sobs. Yet it was all done very quietly, as if there was some reason why she must not make a noise.

Marjorie went close and put her arms about her, her face down against the other’s wet cheek.

“Oh, my dear!” she said brokenly.