h you at first."

"So was I with you! I hadn't grown up, Patty."

"Then I came to know you better and see how you sympathized with
Waitstill's troubles and mine. I couldn't love anybody, I couldn't marry
anybody, who didn't feel that things at our house can't go on as they
are! Father has had a good long trial! Three wives and two daughters
have done their best to live with him, and failed. I am not willing to
die for him, as my mother did, nor have Waitstill killed if I can help
it. Sometimes he is like a man who has lost his senses and sometimes
he is only grim and quiet and cruel. If he takes our marriage without a
terrible scene, Mark, perhaps it will encourage Waitstill to break her
chains as I have mine."

"There's sure to be an awful row," Mark said, as one who had forecasted
all the probabilities. "It wouldn't make any difference if you married
the Prince of Wales; nothing would suit your father but selecting the
man and making all the arrangements; and then he would never choose any
one who wouldn't tend the store and work on the farm for him without
wages."

"Waitstill will never run away; she isn't like me. She will sit and sit
there, slaving and suffering, till doomsday; for the one that loves her
isn't free like you!"

"You mean Ivory Boynton? I believe he worships the ground she walks on.
I like him better than I used, and I understand him better. Oh! but I'm
a lucky young dog to have a kind, liberal father and a bit of money put
by to do with as I choose. If I hadn't, I'd be eating my heart out like
Ivory!"

"No, you wouldn't eat your heart out; you'd always get what you wanted
somehow, and you wouldn't wait for it either; and I'm just the same. I'm
not built for giving up, and enduring, and sacrificing. I'm naturally
just a tuft of thistle-down, Mark; but living beside Waitstill all
these years I've grown ashamed to be so light, blowing about hither and
thither. I kept looking at her and borrowing some of her strength, just
enough to make me worthy to be her sister. Waitstill is like a bit of
Plymouth Rock, only it's a lovely bit on the land side, with earth in
the crevices, and flowers blooming all over it and hiding the granite.
Oh! if only she will forgive us, Mark, I won't mind what father says or
does."

"She will forgive us, Patty darling; don't fret, and cry, and make your
pretty eyes all red. I'll do nothing in all this to make either of you
girls ashamed of me, and I'll keep your father