de up her mind that she would ask her
father for money to pay that bill at least. "The butcher can wait,
and so can all the others," she thought, "but Mr. Anderson ought to
be paid." Besides the pity came a faint realization of the other side
of the creditor's point of view. "Mr. Anderson must look down upon us
for taking his property and not paying our bills," she thought. She
knew that some of the wedding bills had been paid, and that led her
to think that her father might have more money than usual, but she
overheard some conversation which passed between Carroll and his
sister on the morning when he gave her the check.

"Now about that?" Anna had asked, evidently referring to some bill.

"I tell you I can't, Anna," Carroll replied. "I used the money as it
came on those bills for the wedding. There is very little left." Then
he had hurriedly scrawled the check, which she took in spite of her
incredulousness of its worth. Therefore Charlotte, when the check had
been offered her for a new hat, for Anna had carelessly passed it
over to her sister-in-law, had eagerly taken it to pay Anderson.

"I paid the grocery bill," Charlotte told her aunt when she returned.

Anna was in her own room, engaged in an unusual task. She was setting
things to rights, and hanging her clothes regularly in her closet,
and packing her bureau drawers. Charlotte looked at her in
astonishment after she had made the statement concerning the grocery
bill.

"What are you doing, Anna?" said she.

Anna looked up from a snarl of lace and ribbons and gloves in a
bureau drawer. "I am putting things in order," said she.

Then Mrs. Carroll crossed the hall from her opposite room, and
entered, trailing a soft, pink, China-silk dressing-gown. She sank
into a chair with a swirl of lace ruffles and viewed her
sister-in-law with a comical air of childish dismay. "Don't you feel
well, Anna, dear?" asked she.

"Yes. Why?" replied Anna Carroll, folding a yard of blue ribbon.

"Nothing, only I have always heard that if a person does something
she has never done before, something at variance with her character,
it is a very bad sign, and I never knew you to put things in order
before, Anna, dear."

"Order is not at variance with my character," said Anna. "It is one
of my fundamental principles."

"You never carried it out," said Mrs. Carroll. "You know you never
did, Anna. Your bureau drawers have always looked like a sort of
chaos of civilization, ju