da White's
father gave her a shawl exactly like it, and you must let me have the
money to buy this one. It will last my lifetime."

"A hundred dollars is a large price for a shawl," said my father, in
his sober way.

"Oh, dear, no!" was my emphatic answer; "a hundred dollars is a low
price for a shawl. Jane Wharton's cost five hundred."

"I'll think about it," said my father, turning from me rather abruptly.

When he came home at dinner-time, I was alone in the parlor, practicing
a. new piece of music which my fashionable teacher had left me. He was
paid three dollars for every lesson. My father smiled as he laid a
hundred-dollar bill on the keys of the piano. I started up, and kissing
him, said, with the ardor of a pleased girl--

"What a dear good father you are!"

The return was ample. He always seemed most pleased when he could
gratify some wish or supply some want of his children. Ah! if we had
been less selfish--less exacting!

It was hardly to be expected that my sisters would see me the possessor
of a hundred-dollar shawl, and not desire a like addition to their
wardrobes.

"I want a hundred dollars," said my sister Jane, on the next morning,
as my father was about leaving for his store.

"Can't spare it to-day, my child," I heard him answer, kindly, but
firmly.

"Oh, but I must have it," urged my sister.

"I gave you twenty-five dollars only day before yesterday," my father
replied to this. "What have you done with that?"

"Spent it for gloves and laces," said Jane, in a light way, as if the
sum were of the smallest possible consequence.

"I am not made of money, child." The tone of my father's voice struck
me as unusually sober--almost sad. But Jane replied instantly, and with
something of reproach and complaint in her tones--"I shouldn't think
you were, if you find it so hard to part with a hundred dollars."

"I have a large payment to make to-day"--my father spoke with unusual
decision of manner--"and shall need every dollar that I can raise."

"You gave sister a hundred dollars yesterday," said Jane, almost
petulantly.

Not a word of reply did my father make. I was looking at him, and saw
an expression on his countenance that was new to me--an expression of
pain, mingled with fear. He turned away slowly, and in silence left the
house.

"Jane," said my mother, addressing her from the stairway, on which she
had been standing, "how could you speak so to your father?"

"I have just as go