y into the chair that stood between the screen and the end of the
table.

"Oh, mother, this is nice," she sighed, her face radiant, though her
shoulders drooped a little with tiredness.

"Isn't it beautiful? I love these sunny, quiet afternoons, when
everything is peaceful, and the sea quite calm." Her eyes looked beyond
the little kitchen to the steep, sunny street outside, and beyond that
again to where the blue sea heaved and glittered in the distance.
The little window, as well as the door, stood wide open, letting in the
scent of the sun-warmed wallflowers, and box, and boy's love.
The bees buzzed contentedly over the beds. One made his way in to Lucy's
plants in the window.

"I seem to smell the sea even through the scent of the flowers,"
said Lucy.

"I am sure I do. I can't think how people can choose to live inland, can
you, mother?"

"I don't suppose they choose, they just live where God has seen fit to
place them--where their work lies."

"Well, I hope my work will always be in some place near the sea," said
Mona decidedly. "I don't think I could live away from it."

Lucy smiled. "I think you could, dear, if you made up your mind to it!
I am sure you are not a coward."

"I don't see that it has got anything to do with being a coward or not,"
objected Mona.

"But indeed it has. If people can't face things they don't like without
grumbling all the time they are cowards. It is as cruel and cowardly to
keep on grumbling and complaining about what you don't like as it is brave
to face it and act so that people never guess what your real feelings are.
Think of my mother now. She loved living in a town, with all that there
is to see and hear and interest one, and, above all, she loved London.
It was home to her, and every other place was exile. Yet when, after they
had been married a couple of years, her husband made up his mind to live
right away in the country, she never grumbled, though she must have felt
lonely and miserable many a time. Her mother, and all belonging to her,
lived in London, and I know she had a perfect dread of the country.
She was afraid of the loneliness. Then my father tried his hand at
farming and lost all his savings, and after that there was never a penny
for anything but the barest of food and clothing, and sometimes not enough
even for that. Well, I am quite sure that no one ever heard a word of
complaint from mother's lips, and when poor father reproached himself