ocked tone. "It is a wonder God doesn't
strike you dead; I never heard--"

"I don't believe there is a God," I said fiercely, "and if there is, He's
not the merciful being He's always depicted, or He wouldn't be always
torturing me for His own amusement."

"Sybylla, Sybylla! That I should ever have nurtured a child to grow up
like this! Do you know that--"

"I only know that I hate this life. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it," I
said vehemently.

"Talk about going out to earn your own living! Why, there's not a woman
living would have you in her house above a day. You are a perfect
she-devil. Oh God!" And my mother began to cry. "What have I done to be
cursed with such a child? There is not another woman in the district with
such a burden put upon her. What have I done? I can only trust that my
prayers to God for you will soften your evil heart."

"If your prayers are answered, it's more than ever mine were," I retorted.

"_Your_ prayers!" said my mother, with scorn. "The horror of a child not
yet sixteen being so hardened. I don't know what to make of you, you
never cry or ask forgiveness. There's dear little Gertie now, she is
often naughty, but when I correct her she frets and worries and shows
herself to be a human being and not a fiend."

So saying my mother went out of the room.

"I've asked forgiveness once too often, to be sat upon for my pains," I
called out.

"I believe you're mad. That is the only feasible excuse I can make for
your conduct," she said as a parting shot.

"Why the deuce don't you two get to bed and not wrangle like a pair of
cats in the middle of the night, disturbing a man's rest?" came in my
father's voice from amid the bedclothes.

My mother is a good woman--a very good woman--and I am, I think, not
quite all criminality, but we do not pull together. I am a piece of
machinery which, not understanding, my mother winds up the wrong way,
setting all the wheels of my composition going in creaking discord.

She wondered why I did not cry and beg forgiveness, and thereby give
evidence of being human. I was too wrought up for tears. Ah, that tears
might have come to relieve my overburdened heart! I took up the home-made
tallow candle in its tin stick and looked at my pretty sleeping sister
Gertie (she and I shared the one bed). It was as mother had said. If
Gertie was scolded for any of her shortcomings, she immediately took
refuge in tears, said she was sorry, obtained forgiveness, a