, and it seems, too, as if I should not be doing
right by the girls. There are things more important even than doing
work for others. I have got it through my head that I can be dreadfully
selfish being unselfish."

"Well, I suppose you are right," admitted Benny with a sigh.

Then he kissed Annie and went away, and the blackness of loneliness
settled down upon her. She had wondered at first that none of the
village people came to see her, although she did not wish to talk to
them; then she no longer wondered. She heard, without hearing, just what
her sisters had said about her.

That was a long winter for Annie Hempstead. Letters did not come very
regularly from Tom Reed, for it was a season of heavy snowfalls and the
mails were often delayed. The letters were all that she had for comfort
and company. She had bought a canary-bird, adopted a stray kitten, and
filled her sunny windows with plants. She sat beside them and sewed, and
tried to be happy and content, but all the time there was a frightful
uncertainty deep down within her heart as to whether or not she was
doing right. She knew that her sisters were unworthy, and yet her love
and longing for them waxed greater and greater. As for her father, she
loved him as she had never loved him before. The struggle grew terrible.
Many a time she dressed herself in outdoor array and started to go
home, but something always held her back. It was a strange conflict
that endured through the winter months, the conflict of a loving,
self-effacing heart with its own instincts.

Toward the last of February her father came over at dusk. Annie ran to
the door, and he entered. He looked unkempt and dejected. He did not
say much, but sat down and looked about him with a half-angry,
half-discouraged air. Annie went out into the kitchen and broiled some
beefsteak, and creamed some potatoes, and made tea and toast. Then she
called him into the sitting-room, and he ate like one famished.

"Your sister Susan does the best she can," he said, when he had
finished, "and lately Jane has been trying, but they don't seem to have
the knack. I don't want to urge you, Annie, but--"

"You know when I am married you will have to get on without me," Annie
said, in a low voice.

"Yes, but in the mean time you might, if you were home, show Susan and
Jane."

"Father," said Annie, "you know if I came home now it would be just
the same as it was before. You know if I give in and break my word with