nfinished, showing the daylight through the chinks
between the logs. Floor there was none.

"It could never be made comfortable, I am afraid," she said, as she made
her way down the creaking ladder. "I could never think of bringing the
bairns here." And it was with a heavy heart that she took her way home.

But her courage rose again. Before many days had passed she had decided
to try what could be done with the place. The house, such as it was,
with a little square of garden-ground, could be got for a rent merely
nominal. It was near her school. She could live at home, and the
little ones could go to school with her. Thus they could be kept
together, and their education not be neglected. With what she and her
sisters could earn they could live comfortably for some years in this
quiet place. She could not fulfil her promise to her father to keep the
little ones together, elsewhere; for she must not give up her school.
Her salary was not large, but it was sure; and here they would be under
her own eye. The price of the farm had been well invested in her aunt's
name, though Aunt Elsie herself was not yet aware of the fact. Effie
was not sure whether she would remain with them or return home. But
whatever she did, her income must be quite at her own disposal. The
sisters must work for themselves and the little ones. If their aunt
stayed with them, well; but they must henceforth depend on their own
exertions.

When Effie had once decided that the little log-house on the cross-road
was thenceforward to be their home, her naturally happy temper, and her
earnest desire to make the best of all things for the sake of the
others, made it easy for her to look for hopeful signs for the future,
and to make light of difficulties which she could not fail to see.
Under her direction, and by her assistance, the little log-house
underwent an entire transformation before six weeks were over. Nothing
was done by other hands which her own or Sarah's and Annie's could do.
The carpenters laid new floors and mended broken windows; the plasterers
filled the chinks and covered the walls of what was to be their chamber;
but the girls themselves scrubbed and whitewashed, papered and painted,
cleaned away rubbish from without and from within, and settled their
various affairs with an energy and good-will which left them neither
time nor inclination for repining. In a little while it would have been
impossible to recognise in the