ever had come out, even in a modified form. The Admiral was at
the other end of the world, and even had he been near at hand Mrs. Carey
would never have confided the family difficulties to him. She could
hardly have allowed him even to tide her over her immediate pressing
anxieties, remembering his invalid sister and his many responsibilities.
No, the years until Gilbert was able to help, or Nancy old enough to use
her talents, or the years before the money invested with Allan would
bring dividends, those must be years of self-sacrifice on everybody's
part; and more even than that, they must be fruitful years, in which not
mere saving and economizing, but earning, would be necessary.

It was only lately that Mrs. Carey had talked over matters with the
three eldest children, but the present house was too expensive to be
longer possible as a home, and the question of moving was a matter of
general concern. Joanna had been, up to the present moment, the only
economy, but alas! Joanna was but a drop in the necessary bucket.

On a certain morning in March Mrs. Carey sat in her room with a letter
in her lap, the children surrounding her. It was from Mr. Manson, Allan
Carey's younger partner; the sort of letter that dazed her, opening up
as it did so many questions of expediency, duty, and responsibility. The
gist of it was this: that Allan Carey was a broken man in mind and body;
that both for the climate and for treatment he was to be sent to a rest
cure in the Adirondacks; that sometime or other, in Mr. Manson's
opinion, the firm's investments might be profitable if kept long enough,
and there was no difficulty in keeping them, for nobody in the universe
wanted them at the present moment; that Allan's little daughter Julia
had no source of income whatever after her father's monthly bills were
paid, and that her only relative outside of the Careys, a certain Miss
Ann Chadwick, had refused to admit her into her house. "Mr. Carey only
asked Miss Chadwick as a last resort," wrote Mr. Manson, "for his very
soul quailed at the thought of letting you, his brother's widow, suffer
any more by his losses than was necessary, and he studiously refused to
let you know the nature and extent of his need. Miss Chadwick's only
response to his request was, that she believed in every tub standing on
its own bottom, and if he had harbored the same convictions he would not
have been in his present extremity. I am telling you this, my dear Mrs.