life was as happy as most girls'. The
chief events in it were Malcolm's holidays. Anna looked forward to them
for months beforehand, and she always cried herself to sleep the day he
left.

She and her adopted mother were the best of friends. Anna regarded Mrs.
Herrick as one of the noblest of women, and her dutiful submission and
anxiety to please her benefactress secretly surprised Malcolm.

Mrs. Herrick was not a demonstrative woman, but in her own way she was
very good to Anna; she encouraged her to call her mother, bought her
pretty dresses and ornaments such as girls loved, but there Anna's list
of privileges was at an end. It never struck Mrs. Herrick that she had
simply no life of her own--that at seventeen or eighteen a girl craves
for congenial companionship, pleasant occupation, and a fair amount of
amusement.

When Anna was liberated from the schoolroom, she would have liked to go
to picture-galleries, attend concerts, and mix with interesting people;
in spite of her shyness and gentleness, she had plenty of mind and
character, and Malcolm had already cultivated her artistic tastes. One
summer, indeed, they had gone abroad, and Malcolm had been with them,
and for two months Anna felt they had been in the anteroom of Paradise.

"The summer we spent in Switzerland and in the Austrian Tyrol," were
words perpetually on Anna's lips. Poor child, she little guessed, as
she built up wonderful castles in the air, that it would be long before
she had such a holiday again.

It was an evil moment for Anna when she volunteered to learn
typewriting, that she might help her adopted mother; from that day she
became the willing slave bound at the chariot wheels of a good-natured
despot. No amount of work tired Mrs. Herrick; she had the strength and
vitality of ten women. It never entered her head that a growing girl in
her teens was liable to flag and grow weary, and so the pretty pink
roses that had bloomed among Alpine snows faded out of Anna's cheeks,
and the soft brown eyes grew heavy.

Anna never complained; if her back ached and her head was hot and
throbbing, Mrs. Herrick never knew it, and she was quite indignant when
Malcolm spoke to her of Anna's changed looks.

"She is not strong, and she is doing far too much. Dawson and I both
think so." Perhaps he spoke with some degree of bluntness, for Mrs.
Herrick responded with unusual irritability.

"I am very much obliged to you and Dawson," she returned rather
s