e by one,
more softly and in a tone meant to restore cheerfulness if possible.
The little wife at the head of the table had just put sugar into
Gabriella's cup and was in the act of pouring the coffee. She hastily
emptied the sugar back into the sugar-dish and asked with look of
dismay:--

"Will you have sugar in your coffee?"

The situation grew worse at breakfast. In a voice to which confidence
had been mysteriously restored during the night--a voice that seemed to
issue from a honey-comb and to drip sweetness all the way across the
table, that big fellow at the foot again inquired:--

"Miss Gabriella, will you have cream gravy--THIS MORNING?"

"No, thank you!"

The oldest boy cocked his eye sideways at his mother, openly announcing
that he had won a secret wager. The mother hastily remarked:--

"I thought you might like a little for your breakfast."

The baby, noticing the stillness and trouble everywhere, and feeling
itself deeply wounded because perfectly innocent, burst into frantic
crying.

Gabriella could have outcried the baby! She resolved that if they had
it for dinner, she would take it though it were the dessert. A moment
later she did better. Lifting her plate in both hands, she held it out,
knife, fork, and all.

"I believe I'll change my mind. It looks SO tempting."

"I think you'll find it nice," remarked the housewife, conciliated, but
resentful. But every child now determined to watch and see what else
she didn't take. They watched in vain: she took everything. So that in
a few days they recovered their faith in her and resumed their
crawling. Gabriella had never herself realized how many different
routes and stations she had in her own body until it had been thus
travelled over: feet and ankles; knees; upper joints; trunk line;
eastern and western divisions; head terminal.

There was never any more trouble for her in that household. They made
only two demands: that she eat whatever was put on the table and love
them. Whatever was put on the table was good; and they were all
lovable. They were one live, disorderly menagerie of nothing but love.
But love is not the only essential of life; and its phenomena can be
trying.

Here, then, in this remote neighborhood of plain farmers, in a little
district school situated on a mud road, Gabriella began alone and
without training her new life,--attempt of the Southern girl to make
herself self-supporting in some one of the professions,--sign of