asn't for her
you'd go away. She never would."

"Go away?" sobbed Fanny--"go away? I wouldn't go away from hell if
she was there. I would burn; I would hear the clankin' of chains,
and groans, and screeches, and devils whisperin' in my ears what I
had done wrong, for all eternity, before I'd go where they were
playin' harps in heaven, if she was there. I'd like it better, I
would. And I'd stay here if I had twenty sisters I didn't get along
with, and be happier than I would be anywhere else on earth, if she
was here. But she couldn't have done it. She didn't know how. It's
awful to put such things into papers."

Eva jumped up with a fierce gesture, ran to the stove, and crammed
the paper in. "There!" said she; "I wish I could serve all the
papers in the country the same way. I do, and I'd like to put all
the editors in after 'em. I'd like to put 'em in the stove with
their own papers for kindlin's." Suddenly Eva turned with a swish
of skirts, and was out of the room and pounding up-stairs, shaking
the little house with every step. When she returned she bore over
her arm her best dress--a cherished blue silk, ornate with ribbons
and cheap lace. "Where's that pattern?" she asked her sister.

"She wouldn't ever do such a thing," moaned Fanny.

"Where's that pattern?"

"What pattern?" Fanny said, faintly.

"That little dress pattern. Her little dress pattern, the one you
cut over my dress for her by."

"In the bureau drawer in my room. Oh, she wouldn't."

Eva went into the bedroom, returned with the pattern, got the
scissors from Fanny's work-basket, and threw her best silk dress in
a rustling heap upon the table.

Fanny stopped moaning and looked at her with wretched wonder. "What
be you goin' to do?"

"Do?" cried Eva, fiercely--"do? I'm goin' to cut this dress over for
her."

"You ain't."

"Yes, I be. If I drove her away from home, scoldin' because you cut
over that other old thing of mine for her, I'm goin' to make up for
it now. I'm goin' to give her my best blue silk, that I paid a
dollar and a half a yard for, and 'ain't worn three times. Yes, I
be. She's goin' to have a dress cut out of it, an' she's comin' back
to wear it, too. You'll see she is comin' home to wear it."

Eva cut wildly into the silk with mad slashes of her gleaming
shears, while two neighboring women, who had just come into the
room, stared aghast, and even Fanny was partly diverted from her
sorrow.

"She's crazy," whispered on