ompletely changed the sisters, whom she loved, faults
and all. Annie realized how horrible it would have been to find her
loved ones completely changed, even for the better. They would have
seemed like strange, aloof angels to her.

They all welcomed her with a slight stiffness, yet with cordiality. Then
Silas made a little speech.

"Your father and your sisters are glad to welcome you home, dear Annie,"
he said, "and your sisters wish me to say for them that they realize
that possibly they may have underestimated your tasks and overestimated
their own. In short, they may not have been--"

Silas hesitated, and Benny finished. "What the girls want you to know,
Annie, is that they have found out they have been a parcel of pigs."

"We fear we have been selfish without realizing it," said Jane, and she
kissed Annie, as did Susan and Eliza. Imogen, looking very handsome
in her blue linen, with her embroidery in her hands, did not kiss her
sister. She was not given to demonstrations, but she smiled complacently
at her.

"We are all very glad to have dear Annie back, I am sure," said she,
"and now that it is all over, we all feel that it has been for the best,
although it has seemed very singular, and made, I fear, considerable
talk. But, of course, when one person in a family insists upon taking
everything upon herself, it must result in making the others selfish."

Annie did not hear one word that Imogen said. She was crying on Susan's
shoulder.

"Oh, I am so glad to be home," she sobbed.

And they all stood gathered about her, rejoicing and fond of her, but
she was the one lover among them all who had been capable of hurting
them and hurting herself for love's sake.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Copy-Cat and Other Stories, by
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

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