n and restlessness seemed to have
been hers forever. Day after day she lay helpless; while Isabeau
grumbled, Margar fretted, and Teddy grew noisy and unmanageable.
Wallace was rarely at home, the dirt and confusion of the house rode
Martie's sick brain like a nightmare. She told herself, as she lay
longing for an appetizing meal, an hour's freedom from worry, that
there was a point beyond which no woman might be expected to bear
things, that if life went on in this way she must simply turn her face
to the wall and die.

Ghost-white, she was presently on her feet. The unbearable had been
borne. She was getting well again; ridden with debts, and as shabby and
hopeless as it could well be, the Bannister family staggered on. Money
problems buzzed about Martie's eyes like a swarm of midges: Isabeau had
paid this charge of seventy cents, there was a drug bill for six
dollars and ten cents--eighty cents, a dollar and forty cents,
sixty-five cents--the little sums cropped up on all sides.

Martie took pencil and paper, and wrote them all down. The hideous
total was two hundred and seventeen dollars on the last day of October.
But there would be rent again on the eleventh--

Her bright head went suddenly down on her arms. Oh, no--no--no! It
couldn't be done. It was all too hard, too bewildering--

Suddenly, looking at the pencilled sums, the inspiration came. Was it a
memory of those days long ago in Monroe, when she had calculated so
carefully the cost of coming on to the mysterious fairyland of New
York? As carefully now she began to count the cost of going home.

It was five years since she had seen her own people; and in that time
she had carried always the old resentful feeling that she would rather
die than turn to Pa for help! But she knew better now; her children
should not suffer because of that old girlish pride.

Her mother was gone. Len and his wife, one of the lean, tall Gorman
girls, were temporarily living with Pa in the old place. Sally had four
children, Elizabeth, Billy, Jim, and Mary, and lived in the old Mussoo
place near Dr. Ben. Joe Hawkes was studying medicine, Lydia kept house
for Pa, of course, and Sally and her father were reconciled. "We just
started talking to each other when Ma was so ill," wrote Sally, "and
now he thinks the world and all of the children."

All these changes had filtered to Martie throughout the years. Only a
few weeks ago a new note had been sounded. Pa had asked Sally if sh