le bit of
tidings of paramount interest in Alison's small world was dinned into
her ears wherever she turned. Jim was engaged. His friends thought
that he had done very well for himself, and it was arranged that the
wedding was to take place just before Lent. Lent would fall early this
year, and Jim's engagement would not last much over six weeks.

Notwithstanding all she had said the day before, Alison turned very
pale when the cruel news came to her.

"What can it mean?" said Grannie, who followed the girl into her
bedroom. "I don't understand it--there must be an awful mistake
somewhere. You can't, surely, have thrown over a good fellow like
that, Alison?"

"No, he threw me over," said Alison.

"Child, I jest don't believe yer."

"All right, Grannie; I'm afraid I can't help it whether you believe me
or not. Jim is dead to me now, and we won't talk of him any more.
Grannie dear, let us go into the kitchen; you and I have something else
to attend to. What is to come o' me? What am I to do for myself now
that I can't get a situation for want of a character, and now that I
have lost my young man?"

Alison laughed in a bitter way as she said the last words. She looked
straight out of the window, and avoided meeting Grannie's clear blue
eyes.

"I must get something to do," said Alison. "I am young, and strong,
and capable, and the fact of having a false charge laid to my door
can't mean surely that I am to starve. I must get work, Grannie; I
must learn to support myself and the children. Oh, and you, you dear
old lady; for you can't do much, now that your 'and is so bad."

"It do get worse," said Grannie, in a solemn voice; "it pains and burns
awful now and then, and the thumb and forefinger are next to
useless--they aint got any power in 'em. 'Taint like my usual luck,
that it aint. I can't understand it anyhow. But there, child, for the
Lord's sake don't worry about an old body like me. Thank the Lord for
his goodness, I am at the slack time o' life, and I don't want no
thought and little or no care. I aint the p'int--it's you that's the
p'int, Ally--you and the chil'en."

"Well, what is to be done, grandmother? It seems to me that we have
not a day to lose. We never could save much, there was too great a
drag on your earnings, and mine seemed swept up by rent and twenty
other things, and now neither you nor I have been earning anything for
weeks. We can't have much money left now, have we