as eight
years ago. Things went from bad to worse then, until there was almost
nothing left."

"I knew there was some such story as that back of them," declared Billy.
"But how do you suppose they came here?"

"To get away from--everybody, I suspect," replied Arkwright. "That would
be like them. They were very proud; and it isn't easy, you know, to be
nobody where you've been somebody. It doesn't hurt quite so hard--to be
nobody where you've never been anything but nobody."

"I suppose so," sighed Billy. "Still--they must have had friends."

"They did, of course; but when the love of one's friends becomes _too_
highly seasoned with pity, it doesn't make a pleasant morsel to swallow,
specially if you don't like the taste of the pity--and there are people
who don't, you know. The Greggorys were that kind. They were morbidly
so. From their cheap little cottage, where they did their own work, they
stepped out in their shabby garments and old-fashioned hats with heads
even more proudly erect than in the old days when their home and their
gowns and their doings were the admiration and envy of the town. You
see, they didn't want--that pity."

"I _do_ see," cried Billy, her face aglow with sudden understanding;
"and I don't believe pity would be--nice!" Her own chin was held high as
she spoke.

"It must have been hard, indeed," murmured Aunt Hannah with a sigh, as
she set down her teacup.

"It was," nodded Arkwright. "Of course Mrs. Greggory, with her crippled
foot, could do nothing to bring in any money except to sew a little. It
all depended on Alice; and when matters got to their worst she began
to teach. She was fond of music, and could play the piano well; and of
course she had had the best instruction she could get from city teachers
only twenty miles away from our home town. Young as she was--about
seventeen when she began to teach, I think--she got a few beginners
right away, and in two years she had worked up quite a class, meanwhile
keeping on with her own studies, herself.

"They might have carried the thing through, maybe," continued Arkwright,
"and never _apparently_ known that the 'pity' existed, if it hadn't been
for some ugly rumors that suddenly arose attacking the Judge's honesty
in an old matter that somebody raked up. That was too much. Under this
last straw their courage broke utterly. Alice dismissed every pupil,
sold almost all their remaining goods--they had lots of quite valuable
heirlooms; I