"Then there is a doll in town that can walk and talk. Beth, deary, you
choke me so I can't talk;--and a camera for sister. Would you mind
giving up these things to help pay the hospital expenses, or to buy a
wheel chair or some comfort for Dick?"

Down went the heads again, and dead silence reigned except for the
crackling of the fire and the clicking of Aunty Stevens' needles.

"May we go away and think it over?" said Ethelwyn soberly.

"Yes."

So they slid down and disappeared to think it out alone, as they always
did when obliged to settle questions for themselves. Ethelwyn went
outdoors, and crawled into the hammock on the porch. The wind blew
mistily from the sea and was heavy with dampness and cold, but the child
paid no attention to that; she was so busy thinking. Surely, she
thought, there was money enough for Dick and the others without giving
up her camera and the sea trip. She had longed for a camera all summer.
Nan had the use of her mother's and had taken their pictures in all
places and positions, and she did so wish for one. But then, there was
poor Dick, how uncomfortable he had looked.

Elizabeth, meantime, went to the bedside of her beloved doll family.
They were lying serene and placid, exactly as she had placed and tucked
them in at bedtime, with her own motherly hand, and the memory of Dick
lying racked with pain on the comfortless bed where she had first seen
him, almost decided her at once. But a doll that could walk and talk,
though, would be lovely.

"But then, darlings," she said, after a little, "you might think I would
love her better than you, and you are such dears, you don't deserve
that."

So Beth kissed them all with fervor, her mind quite made up.

While they were away, Aunty Stevens said, "Isn't that a pretty hard
test?"

The children's mother shook her head thoughtfully at the dancing fire.

"I hope not," she said. "I don't wish them to do things now that they
will repent of afterwards. But it seems to me that if they are trained
now to be unselfish, they will always be so. Don't you think, dear Mrs.
Stevens, that the whole trouble with the world is its selfishness?"

"No doubt at all about it," said the older woman, nodding emphatically
over her flying needles.

"Then if the world is to be made better, and rid of this, which lies at
the bottom of all the crime, sin and unhappiness, the younger ones of us
will have to be taught to sacrifice, at least some luxuries, to