ine courage that youth and love combine to give, denying
herself even the poor luxury of indulgence of the grief that had fallen
upon her young heart, she had given herself, without thought of anything
heroic in her giving, to the caring for the house and the household, and
the comforting as best she could of her father, suddenly bereft of her
who had been to him not wife alone, but comrade and counsellor as well.
Without a thought, she had at once surrendered all the bright plans that
she, with her mother, had cherished for the cultivation of her varied
talents, and had turned to the dull, monotonous routine of household
duties with never a thought but that she must do it. There was no one
else.

"I believe I am tired," she said again aloud; then letting her heart
follow her eyes into and beyond the blue above her, she cried softly, "O
mother, how tired you must have been with it all, and how much you did
for me! For me, great, big lump that I am! Dear little mother. Oh, if
I had only known! Oh, we were all so thoughtless!" She stretched up
her hands again to the blue sky with its fleecy clouds. "For your sake,
mother dear," she whispered. Not often had any seen those brave eyes dim
with tears. Not often since that day when they had carried her mother
out from the Manse and left her behind with the weeping, clinging
children, and even now she hastily wiped the tears away, chiding herself
the while. "I never saw HER cry," she said to herself, "not once, except
for some of us. And I will try. I MUST try. It is hard to give up," and
again the tears welled up in the brave blue eyes. "Nonsense," she cried
impatiently, sitting up straight, "don't be a big, selfish baby. They're
just the dearest little darlings in the world, and I'll do my best for
them."

Her moment of self-pity was gone in a flood of shamed indignation.
She locked her hands round her knees and looked about her. "It is a
beautiful world after all. And how near the beauty is to us; just over
the fence and you are in the thick of it. Oh, but this is great!" Once
more she rolled in an ecstasy of luxurious delight in the clover and lay
again supine, revelling in that riot of caressing sounds and scents.

"Kir-r-r-ink-a-chink, kir-r-r-ink-a-chink--"

She sprang up alert and listening. "That is old Charley, I suppose, or
Barney, perhaps, sharpening his scythe." She climbed up the conveniently
jutting ends of the fence rails and looked over the field.

"It's B