teps by that!"

"If only I were not a rich heiress," said Polly next morning, "I dare
say I should be better off; for then I simply could n't have gone to
bed for two or three months, and idled about like this for another.
But there seems to be no end to my money. Edgar paid all the bills in
San Francisco, and saved twenty out of our precious three hundred and
twelve dollars. Then Mrs. Greenwood's rent-money has been accumulating
four months, while I have been visiting you and Mrs. Bird; and the
Greenwoods are willing to pay sixty dollars a month for the house
still, even though times are dull; so I am hopelessly wealthy,--but on
the whole I am very glad. The old desire to do something, and be
something, seems to have faded out of my life with all the other
beautiful things. I think I shall go to a girls' college and study, or
find some other way of getting through the hateful, endless years that
stretch out ahead! Why, I am only a little past seventeen, and I may
live to be ninety! I do not see how I can ever stand this sort of
thing for seventy-three years!"

Mrs. Noble smiled in spite of herself. "Just apply yourself to getting
through this year, Polly dear, and let the other seventy-two take care
of themselves. They will bring their own cares and joys and
responsibilities and problems, little as you realize it now. This
year, grievous as it seems, will fade by and by, until you can look
back at it with resignation and without tears."

"I don't want it to fade!" cried Polly passionately. "I never want to
look back at it without tears! I want to be faithful always; I want
never to forget, and never to feel less sorrow than I do this minute!"

"Take that blue-covered Emerson on the table, Polly; open it at the
essay on 'Compensation,' and read the page marked with the orange leaf."

The tears were streaming down Polly's cheeks, but she opened the book,
and read with a faltering voice:--

"We cannot part with our f--fr--friends. We cannot let our angels go.
[Sob.] We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come
in. . . . We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or
re-create that beautiful yesterday. [Sob.] We linger in the ruins of
the old tent where once we had shelter. . . . We cannot again find
aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. [Sob.] But we sit and weep in
vain. We cannot stay amid the ruins. The voice of the Almighty saith,
'Up and onward for evermore!' . .