," he said. "We might disturb Edna
if we talked up here. Can't have you go to bed thinking wrong," he went
on when they had reached the living-room where one tiny lamp still
twinkled. "Now sit right down here by me, Sylvia. My heart feels for
you. You miss your father, I know, and I wish I could be the comfort to
you I'd like to be; but we must all at last find comfort in the great
Father of all. We learn little by little that we can't lean on any arm
of flesh."

Sylvia bit back her sobs and pressed her eyes. "Poor father is better
off," she said. "I wouldn't want him back. He suffered, and he said
there wasn't any place for him here any more,--and there isn't for me,
there isn't for me!" she added passionately in a voice that shook.

"Wait, little Princess. The King's daughter is distrusting her Father,
and pitying herself, Sylvia. That's low thinking, child."

"Of course I pity myself," the girl flashed back, "and ten times more
since Miss Derwent came, taking possession of you, and Aunt Martha, and
Uncle Calvin. She has everything. Why should she, while I have
nothing?"

In the silence that followed Sylvia could see the patient lines in her
companion's forehead, and the shining of his deep eyes.

"Except you," she added contritely, clasping her hands around his
shabby coat sleeve, "I have you, but it kills me to cling to you like a
drowning man, while that girl smiles at you from the top of the
wave,--and owns everybody and everything!"

"Edna does some very good thinking," was the quiet response. "Her
temptations are different from yours, and she has struggled with them."

"What has _she_ to bear?"

"Sickness,--not her own, but that of dear ones, and an overdose of
wealth."

"Oh!" The exclamation was scornful and skeptical.

"You remember the tale where the members of a community by common
agreement met in the city's public square, and each one laid down his
burden, and taking up some one else's went home with it? The story runs
that on the following day every man and woman returned to discard the
new burden and take up his own again. Supposing Edna took yours"--

Sylvia broke in: "She would be a girl who is a stranger in a strange
land with no rights anywhere; whose nearest ones cast her off; who has
no future, no money, no home, no plans. A girl who doesn't know how to
clear a table or wash a dish in her cousin's house, while a strange
girl comes in and takes charge of everything. I didn't even know h