nyone, but what we earn"--her head
went up--"never struggle for, or want the things that lie beyond our
means, but make always the opportunities that lie within our grasp, or
_the ones that we can make for ourselves_, serve as stepping stones."

Alma glanced at her sister's sober, handsome face. There were times
when Nancy looked to her like some brave, gallant, sturdy lad, and
there were times when she agreed with Nancy in spite of herself, and
against her own inclinations.

"Here we are--home again. And if it isn't the snuggest, cosiest, most
cheerful burrow between here and Melbrook, why"--Nancy strode gaily up
the little brick walk with her long, boyish strides, and breaking into
a laugh, finished, "I'll beard the Prescott himself--tower, donjon-keep
and all!"

CHAPTER II

INSIDE THE COTTAGE

It was what Nancy called the pluperfect hour of the day; that is, of a
rainy day. The curtains of the living-room were drawn over the
windows, the mellow lamplight dealing kindly with their faded folds.
The rain, which had brought with it an early autumn chill, beat
rhythmically against the panes, and gurgled contentedly from a water
spout, as if it were revelling in the fact that it had had the whole
countryside to itself for four-and-twenty hours.

Alma had washed her yellow hair, and had built a fire to dry it by.
Nancy, in her dressing-gown and slippers, with her own brown mane
braided into a short, thick club, was icing the chocolate cake, helping
herself generously to the scrapings in the earthenware bowl. Mrs.
Prescott was embroidering. This was her greatest accomplishment,
learned in a French convent. Knitting bored her to death, and darning
drove her crazy, but she could sit by the hour stitching infinitesimal
petals on microscopic flowers, and turning out cake mats, tea-cloths
and fancy collars by the score. Faded only slightly by her forty-odd
years, she was still an exquisitely pretty woman, with a Dresden-china
face, marred ever so little by the fine lines which drooped from the
corners of her delicate nose to the corners of her childish mouth. Her
golden hair was barely silvered, her skin as fresh and rosy as Alma's,
and her round little wrists, and pink-tipped fingers, Alma might have
envied. The lacy dressing-gown she wore, which, at the slightest
motion, shook out a faint little whiff of some expensive French
perfume, struck an odd note in the shabby room, where the couch sadly
displayed