eeks were feverishly
flushed with the haste she had made and her pride in her
achievements. She had swept and dusted a good deal that day, also,
and all the books and bric-a-brac were in charming arrangement. She
felt the honest delight of an artist as she looked about her house,
and she said to herself that she was not at all tired. She also said
that she was not at all hungry, even if she had only eaten a cracker
for luncheon and little besides for breakfast. She realized a
faintness at her stomach, and told herself that she must be getting
indigestion. Her little stock of money was very nearly gone. She had
even begun to have a very few things charged again at Anderson's.
Sometimes her father brought home a little money, but she understood
well enough that their financial circumstances were wellnigh
desperate. However, she had an enormous faith in her father that went
far to buoy her up. While she felt the most intense compassion for
him that he should be so hard pressed, it never occurred to her that
it could be due to any fault or lack of ability in him, and she had,
in reality, no doubt whatever of his final recovery of their sinking
fortunes. She wrote her mother that papa was going to the City every
day, that they were getting on very well, and while they had not yet
a maid, she thought it better to wait until they were perfectly
satisfied before engaging one. The letters she had received at first
from Mrs. Carroll had been childishly amazed and reproachful,
although acquiescent. Her aunt had written her more seriously and
with great affection. She told her to send for her at once if she
needed her, and she would come.

Charlotte, going down the street towards the station that night,
expected a letter by the five-o'clock train. She reached the
post-office, which was near the station, at a quarter before six, and
she found, as she anticipated, letters. There were several for her
father, which she thought, accusingly towards the writers, were
bills. It was odd that Charlotte, while not really morally perverted,
and while she admitted the right of people to be paid, did not admit
the right of any one to annoy her father by presenting his bill. She
looked at the letters, and, remembering the wretched expression on
her father's face on receiving some the night before, it actually
entered into her mind to tear these letters up and never let him see
them at all. But she put them in her little bag, and opened her own