aid. 'I can order a pair of skates at
Barridge's. They don't keep the best kind in stock, but I know they can
get them.'

'No, my dear,' said grandmamma at last, very decidedly. 'I am not at all
sure that it would be nice for you--it would have been different if the
Nestors had been here. And besides, there are several things you need to
have bought for you much more than skates. You must have extra warm
clothing this winter.'

She did not say right out that she did not know where the money was to
come from for my wants--as for her own, when did the darling ever think
of _them_?--but she gave a little sigh, and the thought did come into my
head for a moment--was grandmamma troubled about money? But it did not
stay there. We had been so comfortable the last few years that I had
really thought less about being poor than when I was quite little.

And other things made me forget about it. For a very few days after
that, most unfortunately, I got ill.

CHAPTER VIII

TWO LETTERS

It was only a bad cold. Except for having to stay in the house, I would
not have minded it very much, for after the first few days, when I was
feverish and miserable, I did not feel very bad. And like a child, I
thought every day that I should be all right the next.

I daresay I should have got over it much quicker if the weather had not
been so severe. But it was really awfully cold. Even my own sense told
me it would be mad to think of going out. So I got fidgety and
discontented, and made myself look worse than I really was.

And for the very first time in my life there seemed to come a little
cloud, a little coldness, between dear grandmamma and me. Speaking about
it since then, _she_ says it was not all my fault, but _I_ think it was.
I was selfish and thoughtless. She was dull and low-spirited, and I had
never seen her like that before. And I did not know all the reasons
there were for her being so, and I felt a kind of irritation at it. Even
when she tried, as she often and often did, to throw it off and cheer me
up in some little way by telling me stories, or proposing some new game,
or new fancy-work, I would not meet her half-way, but would answer
pettishly that I was tired of all those things. And I was vexed at
several little changes in our way of living. All that winter we sat in
the dining-room, and never had a fire in the drawing-room, and our food
was plainer than I ever remembered it. Granny used to have special
thi