some way to change Uncle Abimelech's mind."

"Then you'll be a prisoner there for the term of your natural life,
dear sis," said Murray sceptically. "You're a clever girl, Prue--and
you've got enough decision for two--but you'll never get the better of
Uncle Abimelech."

"We'll see," I said resolutely, and up to the garret I went. I shut
the door and bolted it good and fast to make sure. Then I piled some
old cushions in the window seat--for one might as well be comfortable
when one is thinking as not--and went over the whole ground from the
beginning.

Outside the wind was thrashing the broad, leafy top of the maple whose
tallest twigs reached to the funny grey eaves of our old house. One
roly-poly little sparrow blew or flew to the sill and sat there for a
minute, looking at me with knowing eyes. Down below I could see Murray
in a corner of the yard, pottering over a sick duck. He had set its
broken leg and was nursing it back to health. Anyone except Uncle
Abimelech could see that Murray was simply born to be a doctor and
that it was flying in the face of Providence to think of making him
anything else.

From the garret windows I could see all over the farm, for the house
is on the hill end of it. I could see all the dear old fields and the
spring meadow and the beech woods in the southwest corner. And beyond
the orchard were the two grey barns and down below at the right-hand
corner was the garden with all my sweet peas fluttering over the
fences and trellises like a horde of butterflies. It was a dear old
place and both Murray and I loved every stick and stone on it, but
there was no reason why we should go on living there when Murray
didn't like farming. And it wasn't our own, anyhow. It all belonged to
Uncle Abimelech.

Father and Murray and I had always lived here together. Father's
health broke down during his college course. That was one reason why
Uncle Abimelech was set against Murray going to college, although
Murray is as chubby and sturdy a fellow as you could wish to see.
Anybody with Foster in him would be that.

To go back to Father. The doctors told him that his only chance of
recovering his strength was an open-air life, so Father rented one of
Uncle Abimelech's farms and there he lived for the rest of his days.
He did not get strong again until it was too late for college, and he
was a square peg in a round hole all his life, as he used to tell us.
Mother died before we could remember, so M