ke so much as a little kitchen of my own, and a
pie-board, and a biscuit-cutter, and a beautiful baking oven, and a
Japan tea-pot."

"The pretty part. But brooms, and pails, and wash-tubs, and the back
stairs?"

"I specified back stairs in the first place, of my own accord. I
wouldn't shirk. Sometimes I think that real good old-fashioned hard
work is what I do want. I should like to find the right, honest
thing, and do it, Aunt Frank."

She said it earnestly, and there were tears in her eyes.

"I believe you would," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "But perhaps the right,
honest thing, just now, is to wait patiently, with all your might."

"Now, that's good," said Desire, "and cute of you, too, that last
piece of a sentence. If you had stopped at '_patiently_,' as people
generally do! That's what exasperates; when you want to do something
with all your might. It almost seems as if I could, when you put it
so."

"It is a 'stump,' Luclarion would say."

"Luclarion is a saint and a philosopher. I feel better," said
Desire.

She stayed feeling better all that afternoon; she helped Sulie
Praile cut out little panels from her thick sheet of gray
painting-board, and contrived her a small easel with her round
lightstand and a book-rest; for Sulie was advancing in the fine
arts, from painting dollies' paper faces in cheap water colors, to
copying bits of flowers and fern and moss, with oils, on gray board;
and she was doing it very well, and with exquisite delight.

To wait, meant something to wait for; something coming by and by;
that was what comforted Desire to-day, as she walked home alone in
the sharp, short, winter twilight; that, and the being patient with
all one's might. To be patient, is to be also strong; this she saw,
newly; and Desire coveted, most of all, to be strong.

Something to wait for. "He does not cheat," said Desire, low down in
her heart, to herself. For the child had faith, though she could not
talk about it.

Something; but very likely not the thing you have seen, or dreamed
of; something quite different, it may be, when it comes; and it may
come by the way of losing, first, all that you have been able yet,
with a vague, whispering hope, to imagine.

The things we do not know! The things that are happening,--the
things that are coming; rising up in the eastward of our lives below
the horizon that we can yet see; it may be a star, it may be a
cloud!

Desire Ledwith could not see that out at Westo