hom she had admired, whom she had served.

She made no allowance, since she herself was perfectly normal, for the
motive which underlay it all. She could not comprehend the strife of the
women over the one man. Tom Reed was in reality the one desirable match
in the village. Annie knew, or thought she knew, that Tom Reed had it
in mind to love her, and she innocently had it in mind to love him. She
thought of a home of her own and his with delight. She thought of it as
she thought of the roses coming into bloom in June, and she thought of
it as she thought of the every-day happenings of life--cooking, setting
rooms in order, washing dishes. However, there was something else
to reckon with, and that Annie instinctively knew. She had been
long-suffering, and her long-suffering was now regarded as endless. She
had cast her pearls, and they had been trampled. She had turned her
other cheek, and it had been promptly slapped. It was entirely true
that Annie's sisters were not quite worthy of her, that they had taken
advantage of her kindness and gentleness, and had mistaken them for
weakness, to be despised. She did not understand them, nor they her.
They were, on the whole, better than she thought, but with her there was
a stern limit of endurance. Something whiter and hotter than mere wrath
was in the girl's soul as she sat there and listened to the building of
that structure of essential falsehood about herself.

She waited until Tom Reed had gone. He did not stay long. Then she went
down-stairs with flying feet, and stood among them in the moonlight. Her
father had come out of the study, and Benny had just been entering the
gate as Tom Reed left. Then dear Annie spoke. She really spoke for the
first time in her life, and there was something dreadful about it all.
A sweet nature is always rather dreadful when it turns and strikes,
and Annie struck with the whole force of a nature with a foundation of
steel. She left nothing unsaid. She defended herself and she accused her
sisters as if before a judge. Then came her ultimatum.

"To-morrow morning I am going over to Grandmother Loomis's house, and
I am going to live there a whole year," she declared, in a slow, steady
voice. "As you know, I have enough to live on, and--in order that no
word of mine can be garbled and twisted as it has been to-night, I speak
not at all. Everything which I have to communicate shall be written in
black and white, and signed with my own name, an