ll on to thirty and showed no signs of taking anything else.

Madam Schuyler smoothed an imaginary pucker across the shoulders and again
pronounced the work good.

"I picked berries and got the cloth," confessed Marcia.

Madam Schuyler smiled benevolently and patted Marcia's cheek.

"You needn't have done that, child. Why didn't you come to me for money?
You needed something new, and that is a very good purchase, a little
light, perhaps, but very pretty. We've been so busy with Kate's things you
have been neglected."

Marcia smiled with pleasure and passed into the dining room wondering what
power the visitor had over her stepmother to make her pass over this
digression from her rules so sweetly,--nay, even with praise.

At supper they all rallied Marcia upon her changed appearance. Her father
jokingly said that when the bridegroom arrived he would hardly know which
sister to choose, and he looked from one comely daughter to the other with
fatherly pride. He praised Marcia for doing the work so neatly, and
inwardly admired the courage and independence that prompted her to get the
money by her own unaided efforts rather than to ask for it, and later, as
he passed through the room where she was helping to remove the dishes from
the table, he paused and handed her a crisp five-dollar note. It had
occurred to him that one daughter was getting all the good things and the
other was having nothing. There was a pleasant tenderness in his eyes, a
recognition of her rights as a young woman, that made Marcia's heart
exceedingly light. There was something strange about the influence this
little new frock seemed to have upon people.

Even Kate had taken a new tone with her. Much of the time at supper she
had sat staring at her sister. Marcia wondered about it as she walked down
toward the gate after her work was done. Kate had never seemed so quiet.
Was she just beginning to realize that she was leaving home forever, and
was she thinking how the home would be after she had left it? How she,
Marcia, would take the place of elder sister, with only little Harriet and
the boys, their stepsister and brothers, left? Was Kate sad over the
thought of going so far away from them, or was she feeling suddenly the
responsibility of the new position she was to occupy and the duties that
would be hers? No, that could not be it, for surely that would bring a
softening of expression, a sweetness of anticipation, and Kate's
expression had been