To sell or rent it was not at present
practicable, and she could not take boarders, for no one boarded in
Friendship. Neither could she leave to try her fortune in the city, so she
had been doing whatever her hand found to do. Sewing, embroidering, a
little teaching, and, in season, pickling and preserving. Friends had been
kind, but Celia was proud and determined to fight her own battle, and
sometimes, as this morning, kindness made her burden seem harder to bear.

The worst of it was the root of bitterness in her heart. She could never
forgive Mrs. Whittredge. Few guessed the intensity hidden beneath Celia's
gentle manner. Only now and then a spark from her dark blue eyes revealed
it. The general construction put upon her proud reserve was that she was
unsociable.

There is no loneliness like that of the unforgiving heart. Celia had never
felt it so strongly as after her meeting with Rosalind Whittredge in the
cemetery. There had been something in the soft gaze of the gray eyes that
she could not forget. It had made her take up the rose again after she
flung it away and carry it home with her.

But she must not linger here any longer. There was an order from the
Exchange in the city which should be promptly filled if she hoped for
others. As she rose she confronted Morgan entering the gate.

"Good morning," he said, and there was an odd sort of embarrassment in his
manner as he added, "Some of your window frames need fixing, Miss Celia."

She smiled and shook her head. "Can't afford it."

"Miss Celia, let me do it, I've lots of time, and the doctor was very good
to me," he said.

Again Celia shook her head, but the hurt look on Morgan's face made her
relent. "Well, perhaps the worst ones," she spelled. She would trust to
being able to make it up to him sometime.

"That's right," he exclaimed, joyfully, adding, as he turned to go, "Don't
you worry, Miss Celia. There's good in it somewhere."

CHAPTER ELEVENTH.

MAKING FRIENDS.

"Is not that neighborly?"

Miss Betty's tea party was the beginning of a new and happier state of
affairs for Rosalind; one pleasant thing followed another. There were
letters from the travellers, long and delightful and full of the genial
spirit of the Forest, making her more than ever certain that they and she
were alike journeying beneath its shelter, and at some turn of the road
would surely meet again.

Mrs. Whittredge also had a letter, "I trust you will not keep Ro