our heads off to
pay expenses, and giving her every cent we could get to run things with?"

"Of course you have. It's what you ought to do, but I certainly give you
credit for doing it. Only I don't think you've fully appreciated Sally's
part. She's worked harder than any of you."

"Has she told you so?" Max was looking straight in front of him, and his
eyes were angry.

"Never! You know she hasn't. She's not that kind of girl. But I'm another
girl, and I can see for myself. Sally's worked hard to make that
apartment seem like home. No matter how blue she felt herself, she's
never acted blue before you--now has she?"

"I can't say that she has. She's a light-hearted girl--always was, and--"

"Don't you think it. Sally's been putting on a brave face and letting
everybody suppose she's cheerful. She's kept you all up when she was
bluer than you are now."

Max stopped short, stood still in the cart-path and looked Josephine in
the eye. She stopped also, and faced him coolly.

"Will you tell me how you know all this?" he inquired, fiercely.

"I've put two and two together, and found they make four," replied
Josephine. "See here, Max "--she spoke more gently, but quite as
decidedly as before--"you mustn't think I'm trying to be disagreeable,
now, of all times. Of course I know you boys all love Sally as devotedly
as brothers can, and do a great deal to show it. But when it comes to
sparing her anxiety and letting her have her way about things she has set
her heart on, I don't think you're always quite as considerate as you
might be. I didn't dream of saying all this to-day. But when you began to
talk about cutting down that pine grove, though you knew what a fancy
Sally took to it, it came over me that you would be just as likely as
anything to do it right now, while Sally is sick--and I just couldn't
help speaking out."

The two walked on in silence for some distance. Then Max spoke, gloomily:

"It's all right enough to consider sentiment, and I know you well enough
to understand what you mean by pitching into me this way. But the craze
Sally's been in over this old place seems to me a thing out of all
reason. What are we, a family of bank clerks and office boys, to shoulder
a proposition like this? We can't think of moving out here and living in
that barracks, and trying to make a living off the soil. Neither can we
put a tenant on here, and fit him out with farm tools, and take the
responsibility and the risk o