uished
match after he had tossed it into the little grate.

"Uncle Amy," said Phil, quite soberly, "I'm really serious now. I've
been wondering a good deal about what's going to become of me."

"How's that, Phil?"

"Well, I'm not as silly as I act; and I've been wondering whether I
oughtn't to try to do something?"

"What kind of something? Housekeeping--that sort of thing?"

"Yes; but more than that. I ought to go to work to earn money."

Amzi shrugged his shoulders.

"Thunder! you can't do that," he said with decision. "It wouldn't be
proper for you to do that."

"I don't see why not. Other girls do."

"Girls do when they have to. You don't have to."

"I'm not so sure of that. We might as well be sensible if we're going to
talk about it."

Amzi agreed to this with a nod and resettled himself in his chair.

"Daddy isn't making enough to take care of us, that's all. This
afternoon I was over in his office cleaning up his desk,--you know he
never does it himself, and even a harum-scarum like me can help it
some,--and I saw a lot of things that scared me. Bills and things like
that. And it would be hard to talk to daddy about it; I don't think I
ever could. And you know he really could make a lot of money if he
wanted to; I can tell that from the letters he gets. He doesn't answer
his letters. Every month last year I used to straighten his desk, and
some of last spring's bills are still there, and they haven't been paid.
I know, of course, that that can't go on forever."

"You oughtn't to have to bother about that, Phil. It's none of your
business."

"Yes," she replied, earnestly, "it is my business. And it's been
troubling me for a long time. I can't talk to father about it; you can
see how that would be; and he's such a dear--so fine and kind. I suppose
there isn't anybody on earth as fine as daddy. And he breaks my heart,
sometimes; goes about so quiet, as though he had gone into himself and
shut the blinds, as they do in a house where somebody's dead. It seems
just like that, Uncle Amy."

Amzi was uncomfortable. It was not to hear her speak of drawn blinds in
houses of the dead that he had summoned Phil for this interview. His
sisters had asked him to reason with her, as they had often appealed to
him before in their well-meant but tactless efforts to correct her
faults, but she had evinced an accession of reasonableness that made him
uneasy. She had changed from the impulsive, exasperating young cr