the
way you have been doing? Oh, dear, what a queer world it is! I
wouldn't mind so much if Gloriana didn't have to suffer, too; but it is
too bad to keep her here on the boiling desert when she might be
enjoying life on the Island or at the beach. It wouldn't be so bad if
those awful boys weren't here, either; but they are the _limit_. I am
on edge every minute of the day, looking for the next outbreak. I
don't believe they _can_ be good. And yet--there's no other way--out
of it. I can't let Mrs. McKittrick come home just because I am too
utterly selfish to stay here myself. She has been so good to me. And
it is positively out of the question for her to have the children with
her."

Undecided, rebellious, unhappy, Tabitha crossed the room to the window,
and stood looking out over the barren mountainside. Should she? Could
she? What ought she to do? On the other side of a little gully just
opposite the window, sat Irene, rocking to and fro on a teetering
stone, and singing in a high, sweet treble to a battered rag-doll,
hugged tightly to her breast. The words floated up to the girl in the
window, indistinct at first, but growing clearer as the singer forgot
her surroundings; and Tabitha suddenly found herself listening to the
queer, garbled words of the song that fell from the childish lips.

"What in creation does she think she is singing?" she asked herself in
amazement, recognizing with a fresh pang the tune Gloriana had begun
the day with.

Irene finished the verse and commenced again:

"Maxwellton breaks her bonnet,
And nearly swallows two,
An' 'twas their hat and her locket
Gave me a pummy stew.
Gave me a pummy stew
Which near forgot can be,
And for bonnet and a locket
I'd lame a downy deed."

Three times she repeated the distorted version of that grand old song,
and somehow the frown of perplexity smoothed itself from the listener's
brow.

"Dear little girl," she whispered; "it's your father and your mother!
I am a selfish old heathen! Of course I will stay as long as I am
needed!"

Quietly returning to the kitchen where Gloriana sat pretending to sew,
she laid the mother's letter on the table before the seamstress, and
when the gray eyes had read the message and glanced inquiringly up at
the dark face beside her, Tabitha nodded her head. "Yes," she
half-whispered. "I can't desert them now." Then after a moment of
silence, she added, "But you will go with