Aunt Marthe thinks she is a splendid
character."

"So she oughter be!" retorted the old lady, "with sech a bringin' up ez
she's hed. But land! childern's dretful disappointin' ter a pusson.
There ain't a selfish bone in _my_ body, but Penel's ez full uv 'em.
She'll let me lie awake by the hour at a time while she's a' snoozin'
on the sofy beside me. She don't sleep in her own bed any more because I
hev ter hev her handy ter rub me when the rheumatiz gits ter jumpin'.
She sez she can't help bein' drowsy when she's workin' through the day,
but land! she'd manage ter keep awake ef she hed any sympathy! She ain't
got no sympathy, Penel ain't; an' she ain't a bit forehanded.

"But I don't 'spect nuthin' else in this world. It's a wale o' tears an'
we ain't got nuthin' else ter look fer but triberlation an' woe. Man ez
born ter trouble ez the sparks fly upward, an' a woman allers hez the
lion's share."

Evadne burst into the sitting-room with flashing eyes. "Aunt Marthe, if
I were Penelope Riggs, I would shoot her mother! She's just a crooked
old bundle of unreasonableness and ingratitude!"

Mrs. Everidge laughed. "No, you wouldn't dear, not if you _were_
Penelope."

"But, Aunt Marthe, how does she stand it? Why, it would drive me crazy
in a week! To think of that poor soul, working like a slave all day, and
then grudged the few winks of sleep she gets on a hard old sofa. I
declare, it makes me feel hopeless!"

"The day I climbed Mont Blanc," said Mrs. Everidge softly, "we had a
wonderful experience. Down below us a sudden storm swept the valley.
The rain fell in torrents, and the thunder roared, but up where we stood
the sun was shining and all was still. When we walk with Christ, little
one, we find it possible to live above the clouds."

"An Alpine Christian!" cried Evadne. "Oh, Aunt Marthe, that is
beautiful!"

CHAPTER XIII.

"The ancient Egyptians, Evadne," remarked Mr. Everidge the next day at
dinner, as he selected the choicest portions of a fine roast duck for
his own consumption, "during the period of their nation's highest
civilization, subsisted almost exclusively upon millet, dates and other
fruits and cereals; and athletic Greece rose to her greatest culture
upon two meals a day, consisting principally of maize and vegetables
steeped in oil. Don't you think you ladies would find it of advantage to
copy them in this laudable abstemiousness? There is something repugnant
to a refined taste in the