I
had stepped across the room to get a picture-book for Robbie. How could
I know that he was going to fall? I don't think you are very kind,
anyway, when I am helping all that I can, and losing school besides."

And Miss Jennie put on an air of lofty and injured innocence.

"I believe she is sweeping right on the bread," said Eurie, her thoughts
turned into another channel. "Go and see, Jennie."

Jennie went, and returned as full of comfort as any of Job's friends.

"She swept right straight at it; and she left the door open, and the
wind blew the cloth off, and a great hunk of dust and dirt lies right on
top of one loaf, and the clothes are boiling over on the others. Nice
bread you'll have!"

Before this sentence was half finished, Eurie sat the baby on the floor
and ran, stopping only to give orders that Jennie should not let him go
to sleep for anything.

The door-bell was the next sound that tried her nerves. The little
parlor where they had lingered late, she and Nellis, last evening, when
they had a pleasant talk together, the pleasantest she had ever had with
that brother; now she remembered how it looked; how he had said, as he
glanced back when they were leaving:

"Eurie, I hope you won't have any _special_ calls before you get around
to this room in the morning; it looks as though there had been an
upheaval of books and papers here."

Books, and papers, and dust, and her hat and sack, and Jennie's gloves,
and Robbie's play-things; she had forgotten the parlor.

Meantime, Jennie had rushed to the door, and now returned, holding the
kitchen door open, and talking loud enough to be heard distinctly in the
parlor.

"Eurie, Leonard Brooks is in the parlor. He says he wants to see you for
just a minute, and I should think that is about as long as he would care
to stay; it looks like sixty in there."

"Oh, dear me!" said Eurie, and she looked down at her dress. It had
long black streaks running diagonally across it, and dish-water and
grease combined on her apron; a few drops of arnica on her sleeves and
hands did not improve the general effect.

"Jennie, why in the world didn't you tell him that I was engaged, and
couldn't see him this morning?"

"Why, how should I know that you wanted me to say so to people? You
didn't tell me. He said he was in a hurry. He isn't alone, either; there
is a strange gentleman with him."

Worse and worse.

"I won't go," said Eurie.

"But you will _have_ to. I told