been in her mind for years could be repressed no longer. "If it
is so," she said, "I don't wish to interfere with your plans, Theo; but
I will go for--for a little change. I must have it. I am worn out."

"Oh, mamma, you will not surely go by yourself, without us! How could
you get on without us!" cried Chatty. She had perhaps, being the youngest,
a faint stir of a feeling in her mind that a little change might be
pleasant enough. But she took her mother at her word with this mild
protest, which made Mrs. Warrender's impatient cry into a statement of
fixed resolution: and the others said nothing. Warrender was silent,
because he was absorbed in the new thoughts that filled his mind;
Minnie, because, like Chatty, she felt quite apart from any such
extraordinary wishes, having nothing to do with it, and nothing to say.

"It will be very strange, certainly, for me to be alone,--very strange,"
Mrs. Warrender said, with a quiver in her voice. "It is so long since I
have done anything by myself; not since before you were all born. But if
it must be," she added, "I must just take courage as well as I can,
and--go by myself, as you say."

Once more there was no response. The girls did not know what to say.
Duty, they thought, meant staying at home and doing their crewel-work;
they were not capable of any other identification of it all at once. It
was very strange, but if mamma thought so, what could they do? She got
up with nervous haste, feeling now, since she had once broken bounds,
as though the flood of long-restrained feeling was beyond her control
altogether. The natural thing would have been to rush upstairs and pack
her things, and go off to the railway at once. That, perhaps, might not
be practicable; but neither was it practicable to sit quietly amid the
silence and surprise, and see her wild, sudden resolution accepted
dully, as if a woman could contemplate such a severance calmly. And yet
it was true that she must get fresh air or die. Life so long intolerable
could be borne no longer.

"I think in the meantime," she said, with a forced smile, "I shall go
upstairs."

"You were up very late last night," returned Theo, though rather by way
of giving a sort of sanction to her abrupt withdrawal than for any other
reason, as he rose to open the door.

"Yes, it was very late. I think I am out of sorts altogether. And if I
am to make my plans without any reference to the rest of the family----"

"Oh, that is absurd