e those poor
little fingers groping over the paper feeling for the poem that she
couldn't see. And she said so pitifully, 'My long, long night! There are
no stars in this night!' And to think it's all my fault! Oh, it is just
killing me! I could hardly sleep last night for thinking of it, and when
I did I had a dreadful nightmare.

"I dreamed that I was in a great market-place going from stall to stall,
trying to buy something, but I had forgotten what it was I wanted. A
horrid grinning little dwarf, with great fangs in his jaw, like a boar's
tusks, followed me everywhere, carrying my purse. I'd stand awhile in
front of every stall, trying to remember what it was I'd come for, and
when I'd thought awhile I'd cry out, 'Now I know what I want, give me my
own way. It is my own way that I want.' Everybody in the market would
stop to listen, and the man behind the counter would say, 'Not unless
you can pay the price.'

"Then that horrible dwarf would step up, grinning, his old tusks showing
all hideous and yellow, and say, 'Here is the price! Give her her own
way. Here is the price. Let the whole world see the price that she has
paid for her own way,--Betty's eyes is the price. Betty's beautiful
brown eyes!' And then he would hold them out in his ugly knotted hand,
and they would look up at me so reproachfully, that I would scream and
tear my hair. I don't know how many times I had to go through that scene
in my sleep, but when I got up this morning I was as tired as if I had
been running all night, and every place I turn I can see that hideous
old hand thrust out at me with Betty's brown eyes in it. I'll never
insist on having my own way again."

There was no time for Mrs. Sherman to comfort Eugenia then, for Betty
needed her, and in answer to the nurse's summons she hurried away to
soothe the child, sorely distressed by this turn that the house party
had taken.

"Go out on the ponies for awhile," she said, as she left the three girls
sitting disconsolately on the floor. "Go out and get some of this summer
sunshine into your faces and voices so that you can bring it back to
Elizabeth. She will need all that you can bring her, poor child; so,
instead of brooding over your own feelings, think of something that you
can do to cheer her up."

In a little while there was a clatter of ponies' hoofs down the avenue,
and Mrs. Sherman, sitting by the window in Betty's room, waved her hand
to Eugenia, Joyce, and the Little Colon