om.
When she was able to sit up they would come by twos and threes and bring
their work and chat until she was tired. She had the kind of character
which made gossip impossible with her, so that she always got at the
very best her visitors had to give, and the _very best_ of even a
shallow girl is often worth something. Her friends, however, felt it was
she who gave to them because of her uplifting power.

She was sometimes able to read and she carried on her education
systematically, though necessarily with many interruptions. She had a
gift for drawing and amused herself often in that way, though, it was
always a sorrow to her that she had had too little instruction to
produce anything of value to others. She was not altogether shut out
from beauty. Her room gave her a view of the sunset every day, and she
purposely left her curtain up for an hour in the evening to watch the
march of the stars. She had the unspotted beauty of the snow in the
winter, and of the grass and flowers in the summer. Sometimes she was
even able to walk about the dooryard a little and gather flowers for
herself. She always had a few house plants in which she took a strong
interest, and which accordingly flourished.

She was a public-spirited woman and was glad to be made one of the
trustees of the Public Library. She was one of the most efficient
members of the board, though she was seldom strong enough to be driven
as far as the library building.

She was determined that her sisters' lives should not be trammeled by
her weakness. The fact that she could not go to a place was all the more
reason why her sisters should go and tell her about it. One sister was a
teacher who at first wished to take the neighboring district school
rather than a much finer position in a distant city simply for the sake
of being constantly with the beloved invalid. But the latter would not
allow this. "I shall never be able to go West myself, you know," she
said cheerfully, "but if you go and I have your letters every week, I
shall know exactly what it is like. And you will be so much more
entertaining in vacations than if you stay at home."

By the same course of reasoning the sick sister persuaded the teacher to
go abroad to study a year when the opportunity came. "The photographs
you bring home will mean a great deal more to me than any I could buy,"
she said. "I shall almost feel as if I had seen the pictures
themselves." Every letter which came from the abs