." This was no mere personal
quarrel. Her children distinguished that. This was real, definite
trouble.

Accustomed as the child was to her mother's woes, Lizzie Farnshaw was
moved to unusual demonstrations by the quality of the outburst of tears
which followed the words, and said impulsively:

"Never you mind, ma, I'm going to teach school in another year, and I'll
help pay the interest; and we'll get out of debt, too, somehow."

Mrs. Farnshaw brightened.

"I hadn't thought of that!" she said. "I'm glad you're willin' t' help
out. I had thought maybe you'd get me one of them new nubies after you got
some money of your own." She went into the other room to lay out the black
dress, which death had sanctified some months before, for use on the
morrow. The opportunity to wear the emblems of mourning turned her
childish mind away from the object of her journey, and left her as
unconscious as the young girl herself that the mortgage had extended from
the land to the lives of herself and her husband, and that in that promise
it had laid its withering hand on the future of her child as well.

The promise of assistance had been lightly given; unearned money is always
easily spent; besides, a teacher's salary seemed rolling wealth to the
girl who had never had a whole dollar in her life. The question of paying
the next year's interest was for the time settled. The next morning the
healthy young mind was much more largely concerned with the appearance of
her mother in the new black dress than with either the mourning it
represented or the mortgage which occasioned its presence. She sensed
dimly that a mortgage was a calamity, but her vigorous youth refused to
concern itself for long with a disaster so far removed as the next year.

But though calamity might pursue Lizzie Farnshaw on one hand, true to her
innate nature she handled fate in so masterful a manner that even poverty
could not cheat her youth of all its prerogatives. In order to
sufficiently nourish the teams which must be used in seeding, Josiah
Farnshaw had been obliged to use a part of his seed corn for feed. In
despair at the thought of not being able to plant all the land under
cultivation, he was overjoyed to hear that a farmer by the name of Hornby,
who lived twenty miles or more to the south, had a new and desirable
variety which he was trying to exchange for cows with young calves by
their sides. A calf was selected from their diminished herd, its mother