ness,
and having too much to do. And there are some things in people's lives
that cannot be changed."

"And with such things we must just try and content ourselves," said
Elizabeth.

"Yes. And contentment depends more on ourselves, and less on other
folk, than happiness does. And so we are safer with just contentment,"
said Katie, and in a little she added, "Submission to God's will, that
would be contentment."

"That would be happiness," said Elizabeth, and there was nothing more
said for a long time.

They were sitting in Miss Elizabeth's sitting-room, a perfect room to
Katie Fleming's mind, and the only light came from the red embers of the
wood-fire, now falling low. Miss Elizabeth was leaning back among the
cushions of her father's great arm-chair, and Katie sat on a low chair
opposite, with a book on her lap. Miss Elizabeth was "seeing things in
the fire," Katie knew, by the look on her face, wondering what she saw.
She looked "like a picture," sitting there in her pretty dress, with her
cheek upon her hand. What a soft white hand it was, with its one bright
ring sparkling in the firelight! Katie looked at it, and then at her
own. Hers was not very large, but it was red and roughened, bearing
traces of her daily work. She held it up and looked at it in the
firelight, not at all knowing why she did it, but with the strangest
feeling of discomfort. It was not the difference of the hands that
troubled her. Somehow she seemed to be looking, not at the two hands,
but at the two lives, hers and Miss Elizabeth's.

For Miss Elizabeth's was a pleasant life, though she had looked grave
when she said so. She had so many things to enjoy--her music, her
reading, her flowers, with only pleasant household duties, and above all
she had leisure. Katie thought of her as she had seen her often,
sitting in the church, or in the garden among her flowers, or under the
trees in the village street, looking so fair and sweet, so different
from any one else, so very different from Katie herself, and a momentary
overpowering discontent seized her--discontent with herself, her home,
her manner of life, with the constant daily work which seemed to come to
nothing but just a bare living. It was the same thing over and over
again, housework and dairy-work, and waking and sleeping, with nothing
to show for it all at the year's end. What was the good of it all?

Katie let her book fall on the floor as she put her hands toget