out of sight, but always there. And in the
end she brought up a picture of Elizabeth's mother--the bright little
mother whom she never forgot and who used to say, "Little Lizzie is
more like me than any of my children." That assurance always came to
Elizabeth. No, her whole family might forsake her, but her mother was
always her very own. Her mother could never, never have been so cruel
as merely to adopt her. Next, as always, came contrition, and deep
self-abasement. She stopped crying and lay still, wondering why it was
she could never be good like Annie, or even Jean. Then there was
Constance Holworth, the lonely girl in the Sunday-school library book.
She never got into a temper. And if she ever did, or even thought the
smallest wrong thought, she always went down to the drawing-room and
said sweetly, "Dear mamma, please forgive me." Even Elizabeth's
imagination could not draw a congruous picture of herself speaking thus
to Sarah Emily without some strange result. Besides, they had no
drawing-room, and evidently one needed that sort of chamber for the
proper atmosphere. Elizabeth wondered drearily what a drawing-room
could be. Most likely a room in which one sat and drew pictures all
day long. This reminded her of her own drawing materials lying in the
bottom drawer, one of her birthday presents from Mrs. Jarvis. She half
arose, with the thought that she might get out her paint-box or the old
faded doll that Mary and she shared, then sank back despairingly upon
the mat again. What was the use trying to solace a broken heart with
such trifles?

But when she grew up and became a great artist, and drew pictures as
big as the Vicar of Wakefield's family group, and all the Gordons came
to her drawing-room to wonder and admire,--Sarah Emily and Aunt
Margaret the most eager and admiring of all,--then, though she would be
very kind to them all, she would never smile. She would always wear a
look of heart-broken melancholy, and when people would ask what made
the great Miss Gordon, who was Mrs. Jarvis's adopted daughter, so very,
very sad, Mrs. Jarvis would explain that dreadful afflictions in her
childhood had blighted her whole life. And then Sarah Emily and Aunt
Margaret would go away weeping over the havoc they had wrought.

Elizabeth gained so much comfort from these reflections that she came
up from the depths of despair sufficiently to take note of her
surroundings. The window looking out upon the o