king wistfully at the face above her, "if only
one person in the world could remembah me as Miss Sarah remembahs _you_,
you beautiful Grandmothah Amanthis, it would be worth all the misahable
time I have had."

Then she turned suddenly and went into the library to look for the poem
Miss Sarah had quoted. She had never taken the volume from the shelves
before. She did not care for poetry as Betty did, and it took her some
time to find the lines she was looking for. But when she found them, she
took the book back to the drawing-room, and read the page again and
again, with a quick bounding of the pulses as she realized that here in
words was the ambition which she had often felt vaguely stirring within
her. Even if she could not reach the highest ones, and be "the cup of
strength," or "make undying music in the world," she could at least
attempt the other aims it held forth. She could at least try "to ease
the burden of the world." She could live "in scorn for miserable aims
that end with self."

With the book open on her lap, and her hands clasped around her knees,
she sat looking steadily into the fire. She did not know what a long,
long step she was taking out of childhood that afternoon, nor that the
sweet seriousness of her new purpose shone in her upturned face. But
when the old Colonel came into the room and found her sitting there in
the firelight, he paused and then glanced up at the portrait. He was
almost startled by the striking resemblance,--a likeness of expression
that he had never noticed before.

CHAPTER XIV.

"CINDERELLA"

LLOYD sat on the window-seat of the stair-landing, looking out on the
bare February landscape. She was thinking of the poem she had learned
three weeks before, on the afternoon of Miss Sarah's visit, and it made
her dissatisfied. When one was all a-tingle, as she had been, with a
high purpose to help ease the burden of the world and make undying music
in it, and when one longed to do big, heroic deeds and had ambitions
high enough to reach the stars, it was hard to be content with the
commonplace opportunities that came her way.

The things she had been doing seemed so paltry. To carry a glass of
jelly to the Crisps, a pot of pink hyacinths to Miss Marietta, to write
a letter for Aunt Cindy, to sit for an hour with Mrs. Bisbee,--these all
were so trivial and pitifully small that she felt a sense of disgust
with herself and her efforts. Yawning and swinging her foot, she