ybody else that is coming to make more work for us. I could stand
the work, though, but I can't stand scolding all the time. Mother
hasn't said a pleasant word to me to-day."

"Sh--h!" said Florence. "Mother is sick and nervous. Don't you think
if--if you wouldn't provoke mother so much it would be better? And
then maybe"--Florence was almost afraid to speak her next
thought--"don't you think you answer back a good deal sometimes?"

"There! you just hush up," said Margaret. "I guess you needn't set up
for a lecturer, too; two years younger than I am, you are taking a
good deal upon yourself, I should say. I'm nervous, too. Young folks
are called cross, but older ones always called nervous, when they are
cross. I wish I could go off somewhere. I'd go anywhere to get away
from home, for it's just dreadful. Mother don't care for me one bit.
She don't scold anybody else as she does me. When I go over to Mrs.
Blynn's it just makes me sick. Nettie and her mother are just like
two sisters. They sit under the drop-light with their fancy-work and
talk, or Nettie plays her new pieces over for her mother. I could
play as well as Nettie if I had time to practice, but mother don't
seem to care anything at all about my music. We might keep a girl
like other people. Father is able to. I think it is too bad."

"Oh, don't Mag! Don't say any more," said Florence. "It makes me
shiver to hear you talk so. You know what it says about honouring
parents. I'm sure something dreadful will happen to you. You will
drop right down dead, maybe, or just think how you would feel if
mother should die after you've talked so. Oh, Maggie," she said
timidly, "if you only were a Christian, now, how it would help you."

"Pho," said Margaret. "Mother is a Christian and it don't help her
one bit."

Then Margaret put her head down on the arm of the lounge and cried.
She had wanted to cry all day, but there was no time.

The door stood partly open between Mrs. Murray's room and that of her
daughters. That ruined fruitcake had accomplished its work, the
severe nervous headache had come and obliged her to go up to her room
and lie down, while the girls supposed her to be still in the
dining-room; so the talk came floating in to her while she lay on her
bed pressing her aching temples. What a revelation was this! Was it
possible that she was the person meant? One daughter blaming her, and
the other excusing her. She almost forgot about her head in this new