her helplessly.

"I don't understand, I'm afraid," said he.

"You never do," she answered crossly. There was a silence in which she
felt the growth of a need to justify herself--to herself as well as to
him. "Why, don't you see," she urged, "it's my plain duty to go out and
earn something. Why, we're as poor as ever we can be--I haven't any
pocket-money hardly--I can't even buy presents for people. I have to
_make_ presents out of odds and ends of old things, instead of buying
them, like other girls."

"I think you make awfully pretty things," he said; "much prettier than
any one can buy."

"You're thinking of that handkerchief-case I gave Aunt Emma at
Christmas. Why, you silly, it was only a bit of one of mother's old
dresses. I do wish you'd talk to mother about it. I might go out as
companion or something."

The word came before the thought, but the thought was brought by the
word and the thought stayed.

That very evening Maisie began to lay siege to her mother's desired
consent.

She put her arguments very neatly, so neatly that it was hard for the
mother to oppose them without being betrayed into an attitude that would
seem grossly selfish.

She sat looking into the fire, thinking of all the little, unceasing
sacrifices that had been her life ever since Maisie had been hers--even
the giving up of that treasured silk, her wedding dress, last Christmas,
because Maisie wanted something pretty to make Christmas presents out
of. She remembered it all; and now this new great sacrifice was called
for. She had given up to Maisie everything but her taste in dress, and
now it seemed that she was desired to give up even Maisie herself. But
the other sacrifices had been for Maisie's good or for her pleasure.
Would this one be for either?

She saw her little girl alone among strangers, snubbed, looked down
upon, a sort of upper servant with none of a servant's privileges; she
nerved herself to what was always to her an almost unbearable effort.
Her heart was beating and her hands trembling as she said: "My dear,
it's quite impossible; I couldn't possibly allow it."

"I must say I don't see why," said Maisie, with tears in her voice.

Her mother dropped the mass of fleecy white wool and the clinking
knitting needles and grasped the arms of her chair intensely. Her eyes
behind the spectacles clouded with tears. It seemed to her that her
child should surely understand the agony it was to her mother to refuse
her a