take care of him. All the
time that her mother was sorting, counting, and arranging where things
should go, she sat in the window sullen and unhappy, looking out at the
pansy-bed. Peter grew tired of a companion who did nothing to amuse him,
and began to sprawl and scramble upstairs.

"O baby, come back!" cried Mary, and, I am sorry to say, gave him a
shake. Peter cried, and that brought poor weary Mrs. Forcythe
downstairs.

"Can't you manage to make him happy?" she said. Mary only pouted.

All that day and the next and the next it was the same. Mrs. Forcythe
was busy every moment. There were a thousand things to do, another
thousand to remember. People kept coming in to say good-by. Peter
wandered out on the door-steps when Mary's back was turned, took cold,
and was threatened with croup. Mrs. Forcythe was half sick herself from
worry and fatigue. And all this time Mary, instead of helping, was one
of her mother's chief anxieties. She fretted and complained continually.
Every thing went wrong. Each article put into the boxes cost her a flood
of tears. Each friend who dropped in, renewed the sense of loss. She
scarcely noticed her mother's pale face at all. All the brightness and
busy-ness in her was changed for selfish lamentations, and still the
burden of her complaint was, "I shan't have any flowers in Redding. My
garden, oh, my garden."

"I don't know what's come to her," said poor Mrs. Forcythe. "She's not
like the same child at all." And old Mrs. Clapp, who had been very fond
of Mary, declared that she never knew a girl so altered.

"She's the most _contrary_ piece you ever saw," she said to her
daughter. "I could have given her a right-down good slap just now for
the way she spoke to her mother. It's all her fault that the baby took
cold. She don't lift a hand to help, and I expect as sure as Fate that
we'll have Mrs. Forcythe sick before we get through. I wouldn't have
believed that such a likely girl as Mary Forcythe could act so."

Poor "contrary" Mary! She was very unhappy. The fatal last morning came.
All the boxes were packed. The drays, laden with furniture and beds,
stood at the gate. Mrs. Clapp, and Mrs. Elder, the class-leader, were
going over the house collecting last things and doing last jobs. Mary
wandered out alone into the garden for a farewell look at her pets.

"Good-by, pansies," she said, bending over them. There were only five in
the bed now, for Mary had taken up one and packed it in