t.

"The thing that decided me," she began hesitatingly, "when I was sitting
in my room that night not knowing what I was going to do, I heard father
and Dick talking as they came up, and they had decided to turn Aunt
Ellen and Aunt Laura out of the house they had lived in nearly all their
lives and let it to those MacLeod people. It seemed to me so--so selfish
and--and horrible."

"You cannot have heard properly," said Mrs. Clinton. "It was what they
had decided not to do. Father woke me up to tell me so. But even if----I
don't understand, Cicely dear."

"O mother, can't you see?" cried Cicely. "If I was wrong about that, and
I'm very glad I was, it is just what they _might_ have done. They had
talked it all over again and again, and they couldn't make up their
minds--and before us!"

"Before us?"

"Yes. We are nobodies. If father were to die Dick would turn us out of
the house as a matter of course. He would have everything; we should
have nothing."

Mrs. Clinton was clearly bewildered. "Dick would not turn us out of the
house unless he were married," she said, "and we should not have
nothing. We should be very well off. But surely, Cicely, it is
impossible that you can have been thinking of money matters in that way!
You cannot be giving me a right impression of what has been in your
mind."

"No, it isn't that," said Cicely. "I don't know anything about money
matters, and I haven't thought about them--not in that way. But father
and the boys do talk about money; a lot seems to depend upon it, and I
can't help seeing that they spend a great deal of money on whatever they
want to-do, and we have to take what's left."

"Still I don't understand, dear," said Mrs. Clinton. "Certainly it costs
a great deal to keep up a house like Kencote; but it is our home; we are
all happy there together."

"Are you quite happy there, mother?" asked Cicely.

Mrs. Clinton put by the question. "You know, of course," she went on,
"that we are well off, a good deal better off than most families who
have big properties to keep up. For people in our position we live
simply, and if--if I were to outlive father, and you and the children
were still unmarried, we should live together--not in such a big house
as Kencote--but with everything we could desire, or that would be good
for us."

"And if we lived like that," said Cicely, "wouldn't you think some
things good for us that we don't have, mother? If we had horses,
wouldn't you l