knew her strength as well as her
incompetencies.

She came straight up and hardly noticed Alexina as she passed but went
on to Molly, whose eyes, full of shame and fear, were dully watching
the scene.

Charlotte put her arms about her, drew her to the sofa, and sat by
her. "Poor dear," she said; "poor dear."

Molly drooped, trembled, then turned and clung to her, crying
piteously. "You're sorry for me? I did it because I'm afraid. He said
they all come down here to die. Malise don't know, she don't
understand, she's hard."

"You go down to your dinner, Alexina," said Charlotte; "it's waiting.
Oh, yes, yes you will go." There was finality in the tone, very
different from Charlotte's usually indefinite directions. "Leave your
mother to me; oh, you needn't tell me anything about it; I know. And
take that hardness out of your face, Alexina, it's your own fault if
you let this embitter you, it's ourselves that let things spoil our
lives, not the things. I'll tell you something, that you may believe I
know, something that I told Willy at a time his arrogance seemed to
need the knowledge. My father, my great, splendid, handsome father,
all my life was this way. But he came straight home to my mother, and
so she kept him from worse, and held him to his place in the world.
Keep on loving them, it's the only way. Many a time we've all cried
together like babies, father and mother and I, by her sofa."

"Willy," called Charlotte. The boy ran up from below. "Take Alexina
down to her dinner and afterwards take her out of doors. No, you're
not going back to the hotel, not to-night. Willy can send Peter in for
your woman and your things, for you're going to stay here till she's
better and you see this thing differently."

* * * * *

That evening King and Alexina sat on the edge of the pier, the water
lapping the posts beneath their swinging feet. He was peeling joints
of sugar-cane and handing her sections on the blade of his knife, she
trying to convince herself that they were as toothsome as he insisted
they were. He could idle like a child.

But the girl's mind was back there in the house. "According to your
mother," she was saying, "there's got to be affection back of the
doing of a duty." Poor child, she was putting it so guardedly, so
impersonally she thought.

"Well," said he, dropping his unappreciated bits of cane, piece by
piece into the water, "that's a woman's way of looking at it