she did
not even do what she might have done, and no one was surprised, and no one
blamed her father--no one, at least, but Mrs. Barnes--when at the end of
eighteen months he married pretty, gentle Lucy Garland, one of the
housemaids at the Squire's.

Mrs. Barnes, though, resented very strongly anyone being put in her dead
daughter's place, with control over her daughter's child, and she had
written angrily enough to Peter, demanding that Mona should be given up to
her. And though he doubted the wisdom of it, to please and pacify her,
Peter Carne had let her have the child. "Not for good," he said,
"for I can't part with her altogether, but for a long visit."

"If she puts Mona against Lucy, it'll be a bad job," he thought
anxiously, "and mischief may be done that it'll take more than I know to
undo."

However, Mona felt none of the dislike of her stepmother that her
grandmother felt. In fact, she was too happy-go-lucky and fond of change
to feel very strongly about anything. She had got her father's home and
all his affairs into such a muddle she was not sorry to go right away and
leave it all. She was tired of even the little housework she did.
She hated having to get up and light the fire, and, on the whole, she was
very glad for someone else to step in and take it all off her shoulders.
And as she had left her home before her stepmother came to it, she had not
experienced what it was to have someone in authority over her.

So Mona felt no real grievance against her stepmother, and, with all her
faults, she was too healthy-minded to invent one. Her grandmother's not
too kind remarks about her had fallen on indifferent ears, and,
fortunately, had had no effect except to make Mona feel a sort of mild
scorn for anyone so constantly ailing as Lucy Carne was.

She felt no sympathy for the cause of the ill-health, even though she knew
that it all began one bitter, stormy night when Lucy and the wives of the
other men who were out at sea stood for hours watching for the first signs
of the little storm-tossed boats, in the agony of their hearts, deaf and
blind, and entirely unconscious of the driving sheets of rain and the
biting east wind which soaked and chilled them to the bone.

When at daybreak the storm lulled, and the boats, with all safe on board,
were seen beating up before the wind, all the misery and wet and cold were
forgotten as they hurried joyfully home to make up big fires and prepare
hot food fo