?"

"It is really just as easy to do right as wrong, Kathleen," said Nancy
when the girls were going to bed one night.

"Ye-es!" assented Kathleen with some reservations in her tone, for she
was more judicial and logical than her sister. "But you have to keep
your mind on it so, and never relax a single bit! Then it's lots easier
for a few weeks than it is for long stretches!"

"That's true," agreed Nancy; "it would be hard to keep it up forever.
And you have to love somebody or something like fury every minute or you
can't do it at all. How do the people manage that can't love like that,
or haven't anybody to love?"

"I don't know." said Kathleen sleepily. "I'm so worn out with being
good, that every night I just say my prayers and tumble into bed
exhausted. Last night I fell asleep praying, I honestly did!"

"Tell that to the marines!" remarked Nancy incredulously.

IV

THE BROKEN CIRCLE

The three weeks were running into a month now, and virtue still reigned
in the Carey household. But things were different. Everybody but Peter
saw the difference. Peter dwelt from morn till eve in that Land of Pure
Delight which is ignorance of death. The children no longer bounded to
meet the postman, but waited till Joanna brought in the mail. Steadily,
daily, the letters changed in tone. First they tried to be cheerful;
later on they spoke of trusting that the worst was past; then of hoping
that father was holding his own. "Oh! if he was holding _all_ his own,"
sobbed Nancy. "If we were only there with him, helping mother!"

Ellen said to Joanna one morning in the kitchen: "It's my belief the
Captain's not going to get well, and I'd like to go to Newburyport to
see my cousin and not be in the house when the children's told!" And
Joanna said, "Shame on you not to stand by 'em in their hour of
trouble!" At which Ellen quailed and confessed herself a coward.

Finally came a day never to be forgotten; a day that swept all the
former days clean out of memory, as a great wave engulfs all the little
ones in its path; a day when, Uncle Allan being too ill to travel,
Cousin Ann, of all people in the universe,--Cousin Ann came to bring the
terrible news that Captain Carey was dead.

Never think that Cousin Ann did not suffer and sympathize and do her
rocky best to comfort; she did indeed, but she was thankful that her
task was of brief duration. Mrs. Carey knew how it would be, and had
planned all so that she herself coul