iness, vague and indefinite, a
longing for something she had never known.

A rag carpet in well-harmonized stripes was on the floor; a blue and
white log-cabin quilt was on the bed; over the lace-edged pillow
covers there hung embroidered pillow shams. One had on it a wreath of
wild roses encircling the words "I slept and dreamed that life was
Beauty," while its companion, with a similar profusion of roses, made
the correction: "I woke and knew that, life was Duty." Martha had not
chosen the words, for she had never even dreamed that life was
beauty. A peddler (not the one that had beguiled her Aunt Lizzie) had
been storm-stayed with them the winter before and he had given her
these in payment for his lodging.

She sat now on a little stool that she had made for herself of empty
tomato cans, covered with gaily flowered cretonne, and drawing back
the muslin frilled curtains, looked wearily over the fields. It was a
pleasant scene that lay before Martha's window--a long reach of
stubble field, stretching away to the bank of the Souris, flanked by
poplar bluffs. It was just a mile long, that field, a wonderful
stretch of wheat-producing soil; but to Martha it was all a weariness
of the flesh, for it meant the getting of innumerable meals for the
men who ploughed and sowed and reaped thereon.

To-night, looking at the tall elms that fringed the river bank, she
tried to think of the things that had made her happy. They were
getting along well, there had been many improvements in the house and
out of it. She had better clothes than ever she had; the trees had
been lovely this last summer, and the garden never better; the lilacs
had bloomed last spring. Everything was improving except herself, she
thought sadly; the years that had been kind to everything else were
cruel to her.

With a sudden impulse, she went to the mirror on her dressing table,
and looked long and earnestly at her image there. Martha was
twenty-five years old, and looked older. Her shoulders were slightly
bent, and would suggest to an accurate observer that they had become
so by carrying heavy burdens. Her hair was hay-coloured and broken.
Her forehead and her eyes were her best features, and her mouth, too,
was well formed and firm, giving her the look of a person who could
endure.

To-night, as she sat leaning her head on the window-sill, Martha's
thoughts were as near to bitterness as they had ever been. This,
then, was all it came to, all her earl