in the world. I am not needed here, now dear
grandmother is gone; and there must be some other place where I am
needed."

"My dear, somebody will want you to keep house for him, some of these
days."

Lois shook her head. "I do not think of it," she said. "I do not think
it is very likely; that is, anybody _I_ should want. But if it were
true," she added, looking up and smiling, "that has nothing to do with
present duty."

"My dear, I cannot bear to think of your going into such drudgery!"

"Drudgery?" said Lois. "I do not know,--perhaps I should not find it
so. But I may as well do it as somebody else."

"You are fit for something better."

"There is nothing better, and there is nothing happier," said Lois,
rising, "than to do what God gives us to do. I should not be unhappy,
Mrs. Barclay. It wouldn't be just like these days we have passed
together, I suppose;--these days have been a garden of flowers."

And what have they all amounted to? thought Mrs. Barclay when she was
left alone. Have I done any good--or only harm--by acceding to that mad
proposition of Philip's? Some good, surely; these two girls have grown
and changed, mentally, at a great rate of progress; they are educated,
cultivated, informed, refined, to a degree that I would never have
thought a year and a half could do. Even so! _have_ I done them good?
They are lifted quite out of the level of their surroundings; and to be
lifted so, means sometimes a barren living alone. Yet I will not think
that; it is better to rise in the scale of being, if ever one can,
whatever comes of it; what one is in oneself is of more importance than
one's relations to the world around. But Philip?--I have helped him
nourish this fancy--and it is not a fancy now--it is the man's whole
life. Heigh ho! I begin to think he was right, and that it is very
difficult to know what is doing good and what isn't. I must write to
Philip--

So she did, at once. She told him of the contemplated changes in the
family arrangements; of Lois's plan for teaching a district school; and
declared that she herself must now leave Shampuashuh. She had done what
she came for, whether for good or for ill. It was done; and she could
no longer continue living there on Mr. Dillwyn's bounty. _Now_ it would
be mere bounty, if she stayed where she was; until now she might say
she had been doing his work. His work was done now, her part of it; the
rest he must finish for himself. Mrs. Barclay would l