ving in an
isolated cottage? It would be social extinction for her."

"The boarding-house would be moral extinction for father."

Mr. Ponsonby grew impatient. "I suppose you think," he said irritably,
"that you have reduced it to this--the sacrifice of one parent or the
other. You have no business to think about such things; but if you
had, to which do you owe the most duty? Who has done the most for
you?"

"Well," Julia answered slowly, "I'm not sure I am considering duty
only; people who don't pay their debts are not always great at duty,
you know. Perhaps it is really inclination with me. Father is fonder
of me than mother is; I have never been much of a social success.
Mother did not find me such good material to work upon, so naturally
she rather dropped me for the ones who were good material. I admire
mother the more, but I am sorrier for father, because he can't take
care of himself, and has no consolation left; it serves him right, of
course, but it must be very uncomfortable all the same. Do you see?"

"No, I don't," her uncle answered shortly; "I am old-fashioned enough
to think sons and daughters ought to do their duty to their parents,
not analyse them in this way." He forgot that he had in a measure
invited this analysis, and Julia did not remind him, although no doubt
she was aware of it.

"I should like to do my duty to them both," she said; "and I believe I
will do it best by going to the cottage. Father would get to be a
great nuisance to mother at the boarding-house after a time, almost as
bad as the pigs and poultry at the cottage. Also, if we had the
boarding-house, father's moral extinction would be complete, but if we
lived at the cottage mother's social one would not; she could go and
stay with Violet and other people the worst part of the time, while we
were shortest of money. Besides all that, there are two other things;
I like the cottage best myself, and I believe it to be the best--I
know the sort of living life we should live at a boarding-house--and
then there is Johnny Gillat."

Mr. Ponsonby had no recollection of who Johnny Gillat was, and he did
not trouble to ask; Julia's other reason was the one he seized upon.
"You like it!" he said; "yes, now we have come to the truth; the
person you are considering is yourself; I knew that all along; you
need not have troubled to wrap it up in all these grand
reasons--consideration for your father, and so on!"

"Oh, but think how much bette