o come with us, to live with us
again; and triumph over me because her dreams and presentiments had come
true.

"I told you, Hosy," she kept saying. "I told you! I said it would all
come out in the end. He wouldn't believe it, Frances. He said I was an
old lunatic and--"

"I didn't say anything of the kind," I broke in.

"You said what amounted to that and I don't know as I blame you. But
I knew--I just KNEW he and I had been 'sent' on this course and that
we--all three of us--would make the right port in the end. And we
have--we have, haven't we, Frances?"

"Yes," said Frances, simply. "We have, Auntie--"

"There! do you hear that, Hosy? Isn't it good to hear her call
me 'Auntie' again! Now I'm satisfied; or"--with a momentary
hesitation--"pretty nearly satisfied, anyway."

"Oh, then you're not quite satisfied, after all," I observed. "What more
do you want?"

"I want just one thing more; just one, that's all."

I believed I know what that one thing was, but I asked her. She shot a
look at me, a look of indignant meaning.

"Never mind," she said, decidedly. "That's my affair. Oh, Ho!" with a
reminiscent chuckle, "how that Cripps woman did glare at me when I said
'twas pretty risky her callin' the Almighty's attention to their doin's.
I hope it did her good. Maybe she'll think of it next time she goes to
chapel. But I suppose she won't. All such folks care for is money. They
wouldn't be so anxious to get to Heaven if they hadn't read about the
golden streets."

That evening, at the hotel, Frances told us her story, the story
of which we had guessed a good deal, but of which she had told so
little--how, after her father's death, she had gone to live with the
Crippses because, as she thought, they wished her to do so from motives
of generosity and kindness.

"They are not really relatives of mine," she said. "I am glad of that.
Mrs. Cripps married a cousin of my father's; he died and then she
married Mr. Cripps. After Father's death they wrote me a very kind
letter, or I thought it kind at the time. They said all sorts of kindly
things, they offered me a home, they said I should be like their own
daughter. So, having nowhere else to go, I went to them. I lived there
nearly two years. Oh, what a life it was! They are very churchly people,
they call themselves religious, but I don't. They pretend to be--perhaps
they think they are--good, very good. But they aren't--they aren't. They
are hard and cruel. Mr. Cr