ain. Then she resumed
operations on the ledger with the sharp end of the pen.

Patience Welcome, like her sister, was dark of hair and eyes. Her hair,
too, had the quality of forming into tendrils about her cheeks which
glowed with a happy, if not a robust, healthfulness. But there the
resemblance ended. The two girls were widely different personalities.
Elsie, the younger, was impetuous by nature, imaginative, and easily
swept off her mental balance by her emotions. She was ambitious, too, and
Millville did not please her. Patience, no less imaginative, perhaps,
possessed a stronger hold upon herself. She admired her daring sister,
but she was sensible of the dangers of such daring and did not imitate
her. She possessed the great gift of contentedness. It colored all her
thoughts, created pleasant places for her in what, to Elsie, seemed a
desolate life; it made Millville not only a bearable but even a happy
place to live in. Millville understood Patience and loved her; Elsie,
being less understandable, was less popular.

It had been a busy day in John Price's store and Patience was entering in
her books items from a pile of bills on the desk before her. It was five
minutes after her usual leaving time, but the girl accepted extra duty
with a cheerfulness that was part of her nature.

In the midst of her work there was a bustle at the back of the store.
John Price, local merchant prince and owner of this establishment, had
returned from the yard at the rear of the store where he had been
superintending the storing of goods, arrived on the late afternoon train.
He was a wiry little old man of sixty, abrupt, nervous, irritable and
given to sharpness of speech which, he was profoundly convinced, hid from
outside perception a heart given to unbusinesslike tenderness. He busied
himself noisily about the shelves for a few minutes, then suddenly stuck
his head through the door of the little office in which Patience was
working.

"What," he said, "you here? Get out. Go home."

"I'll be through in a few minutes," rejoined Patience, without taking her
eyes from her figures.

"Tush," said Mr. Price. "What are you trying to do, give me a bad name
with my trade? People will think I'm a slave driver. Get out."

"In just a minute," smiled Patience.

"Go home, I say," almost shouted Price. He took off his alpaca coat and
hung it on a nail. Then he stepped up suddenly behind Patience, took the
pen deliberately from her hand an