ainly,
slatternly home-gear of other poor women. There was an air of
dejected femininity and slipshod drudgery about every fold of one of
them when it was hung up finished. Fanny used to keep them on a row
of hooks in her bedroom until a dozen were completed, when she
carried them to her employer, and Ellen used to look at them with a
sense of depression. She imagined worn, patient faces of the sisters
of poverty above the limp collars, and poor, veinous hands dangling
from the clumsy sleeves.

Fanny would never allow Ellen to assist her in this work, though she
begged hard to do so. "Wait till you get out of school," said she.
"You've got enough to do while you are in school."

When Ellen told her about the valedictory, Fanny was so overjoyed
that she lost sight of her work, and sewed in the sleeves wrong.
"There, only see what you have made me do!" she cried, laughing with
delight at her own folly. "Only see, you have made me sew in both
these sleeves wrong. You are a great child. Another time you had
better keep away with your valedictories till I get my wrapper
finished." Ellen looked up from the book which she had taken.

"Let me rip them out for you, mother," she said.

"No, you keep on with your study--it won't take me but a minute. I
don't know what your father will say. It is a great honor to be
chosen to write the valedictory out of that big class. I guess your
father will be pleased."

"I hope I can write a good one," said Ellen.

"Well, if you can't, I'd give up my beat," said the mother, looking
at her with enthusiasm, and speaking with scornful chiding. "Why
don't you go over and tell your grandmother Brewster? She'll be
tickled 'most to death."

Ellen had not been gone long when Andrew came home, coming into the
yard, bent as if beneath some invisible burden of toil. Just then he
had work, but not in Lloyd's. He had grown too old for Lloyd's, and
had been discharged long ago.

He had so far been able to conceal from Fanny the fact that he had
withdrawn all his little savings to invest in that mining stock. The
stock had not yet come up, as he had expected. He very seldom had a
circular reporting progress nowadays. When he did have one in the
post-office his heart used to stand still until he had torn open the
envelope and read it. It was uniformly not so hopeful as formerly,
while speciously apologetic. Andrew still had faith, although his
heart was sick with its long deferring. He could not a