etly thinking. The
last words that floated through her mind as she sank to sleep were those
of a half-forgotten verse, learned, she could not say how many
years before:--

You can glad your child or grieve it!
You can trust it or deceive it;
When all's done
Beneath God's sun
You can only love and leave it.

XXIII

NEARING SHINY WALL

Another person presumably on the way to Shiny Wall and Peacepool, but
putting small energy into the journey, was that mass of positively
glaring virtues, Julia Carey. More than one fairy must have been
forgotten when Julia's christening party came off. No heart-to-heart
talk in the twilight had thus far produced any obvious effect. She had
never, even when very young, experienced a desire to sit at the feet of
superior wisdom, always greatly preferring a chair of her own. She
seldom did wrong, in her own opinion, because the moment she entertained
an idea it at once became right, her vanity serving as a pair of
blinders to keep her from seeing the truth. The doctors did not permit
any one to write to poor Allan Carey, so that Julia's heart could not be
softened by continual communication with her invalid father, who, with
Gladys Ferguson, constituted the only tribunal she was willing to
recognize. Her consciousness of superiority to the conditions that
surrounded her, her love of luxury, the silken selfishness with which
she squirmed out of unpleasant duties, these made her an unlikable and
undesirable housemate, and that these faults could exist with what Nancy
called her "everlasting stained-glass attitude" made it difficult for
Mother Carey to maintain a harmonious family circle. It was an outburst
of Nancy's impetuous temper that Mrs. Carey had always secretly dreaded,
but after all it was poor Kathleen who precipitated an unforgettable
scene which left an influence behind it for many months.

The morning after Mother Carey's interview with Gilbert she looked up as
her door was pushed open, and beheld Julia, white and rigid with temper,
standing on the threshold.

"What is the matter, child?" exclaimed her aunt, laying down her work in
alarm.

Close behind Julia came Kathleen, her face swollen with tears, her
expression full of unutterable woe.

Julia's lips opened almost automatically as she said slowly and with
bitter emphasis, "Aunt Margaret, is it true, as Kathleen says, that my
father has all your money and some of Uncle Peter's?"

Something snapp