dith read the letter aloud to the girls and then dropped it in the
fire, watching it without a word, as it curled up in the flame. How
long she had waited for that careless little letter! How anxiously she
had hoped for it! A few days sooner it would have brought untold
happiness. Now it was only a hollow mockery. Well, it was all over now.
Her hopes were in ashes like the letter. How high they had burned! And
the little evening gown she had taken such pleasure in making--there
would never be any occasion fit for its wearing in Westbrooke. She might
as well fold it away. The letter had come too late. And she was asked to
forgive it--the disappointment that would sting all her life
long--simply because it was Daisy's way.

The silence was growing uncomfortable. Amy kept casting frightened
glances at her sister's white, tense face. "Oh, dear," she sighed,
finally, "if this had only been in a story it wouldn't have ended so
dreadfully. Something nice would have happened just at the last minute
to make up for the disappointment."

"But it isn't in a story," said Judith, slowly, rising to leave the
room. "And nothing can compensate for such a disappointment. It will
hurt always."

As the door closed behind her the girls exchanged sympathizing glances.
"If there had even been a good reason," sighed Lillian, "but it was only
carelessness. And the trouble of it is, the world is full of Daisy
Averys."

ANN'S OWN WAY

"Ann! Ann! Have you been home yet to feed the chickens?" The call came
from the doorway of a big old farmhouse, where a pleasant-faced woman
stood looking out over the October fields.

The answer floated down from an apple-tree near by, where a ten-year-old
girl sat perched among its gnarled branches. She had a dog-eared book of
fairy tales on her knee, and was poring over it in such blissful
absorption that she had forgotten there were such things in all the
world as chickens to be fed.

"No'm, Aunt Sally, I haven't done it yet, but I'll go in a minute," and
she was deep into the story again.

"But, Ann," came the voice after a moment's waiting, "it is nearly
sundown, and you ought to go right away, dear. Lottie says that you have
been reading ever since you came home from school, and I am afraid that
your mother wouldn't like it."

[Illustration: "SAT PERCHED AMONG ITS GUARDED BRANCHES"]

"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Ann under her breath, shutting the book with an
impatient slap; but she obediently