xperienced
she had thought out an idea which had flashed through her brain while
Mrs. Liddell was explaining her difficulties, and which she had
carefully kept to herself.

She saw clearly enough the hopelessness of their position; probably with
the intensity of youth she exaggerated it, which was scarcely necessary,
as a small rut is apt to widen into a bottomless pit if it crosses the
path of those who are living up to the utmost verge of a narrow income.
As she reviewed the endless instances of her mother's self-abnegation
which memory supplied--her cheerful industry, her brave struggle to live
like a gentlewoman on a pittance, her tender thought for the welfare and
happiness of her children--she felt she could walk through a burning
fiery furnace if by so doing she could earn ease and repose for her
mother's weary spirit.

"She is looking ill and worn," thought Katherine, "and years older. She
has never been the same since that attack of bronchitis last year. Ada
and the boys are too much for her, though they are dear little fellows;
but they are costly. If Ada would even give us twenty pounds a year more
it would be a great help."

The project Katherine had evolved through the night-watches was to visit
her uncle and ask him, face to face, for help! It is, she argued, harder
to say "no" than to write it; even if she failed she should know her
fate at once, and not have to endure the agony of waiting for a letter.
Nor, were she refused, need her mother ever know now she had humiliated
herself in the dust.

How her young heart sank within her at the thought of being harshly,
contemptuously rejected! It was a positive painful physical sense of
faintness that made her limbs tremble as she pressed on faster than she
was aware. "But I _will_ do it--I will! If I succeed no humiliation will
be too great," she said to herself. "I will speak with all my soul! When
I begin, this horrible feeling that my tongue is dry and speechless will
go away. I must find out where this awful old man is; what is his street
and number. I dared not ask mother. First I will try the publisher; as
the 'servants' hall' publications have rejected it, I shall offer
_Darrell's Doom_ to a first-rate house. Why not try Channing & Wyndham?
They cannot say worse than 'no,' and I shall no doubt see a Directory
there." Thus communing with herself, she took an omnibus down Park Lane
and walked thence to the well-known temple of the Muses in Piccadilly.