id her mother, and now she
saw what a good thing it was that she had staid and talked
impersonalities with Mrs. Burton.

"Well, one thing I know," said the girl, "if she gets that Mr. Ludlow
to encourage me, I'll never go near New York in the world."

Mrs. Saunders escaped into the next room, and answered back from that
safe distance, "I guess you'd better get _her_ to tell you what she's
going to do."

When she returned, the girl stood looking dreamily out of the little
crooked panes of the low window. She asked, with her back to her
mother, "What would _you_ do, if I went?"

"Oh, I should get along," said Mrs. Saunders with the lazy piety which
had never yet found Providence to fail it. "I should get Miss Snively
to go in with me, here. She ain't making out very well, alone, and she
could be company to me in more ways than one."

"Yes," said the girl, in a deep sigh. "I thought of her." She faced
about.

"Why, land, child!" cried her mother, "what's the matter?"

Cornelia's eyes were streaming with tears, and the passion in her heart
was twisting her face with its anguish. She flung her arms round her
mother's neck, and sobbed on her breast. "Oh, I'm going, I'm going, and
you don't seem to care whether I go or stay, and it'll _kill_ me to
leave you."

Mrs. Saunders smiled across the tempest of grief in her embrace, at her
own tranquil image in the glass, and took it into the joke. "Well, you
ain't going to leave this minute," she said, smoothing the girl's black
hair. "And I don't really care if you never go, Nie. You mustn't go on
my account."

"Don't you want me to?"

"Not unless you do."

"And you don't care whether I'm ever an artist or not?"

"What good is your being an artist going to do _me_?" asked her mother,
still with a joking eye on herself in the mirror.

"And I'm perfectly free to go or to stay, as far as your wish is
concerned?"

"Well!" said Mrs. Saunders, with insincere scorn of the question.

The girl gave her a fierce hug; she straightened herself up, and dashed
the water from her eyes. "Well, then," she said, "I'll see. But promise
me one thing, mother."

"What is it?"

"That you won't ask me a single thing about it, from this out, if I
_never_ decide!"

"Well, I won't, Nie. I promise you that. _I_ don't want to drive you to
anything. And I guess you know ten times as well what you want to do,
as I do, anyway. I ain't going to worry you."

Three weeks later, just before f