he shut it
again. An indescribable expression was on her pretty, peasant face,
the face of a down-trodden race, who yet retained in spirit a spark
of rebellion and resentment. Marie, in her ragged blouse, with her
countenance of inscrutable silence, standing behind her mistress's
chair, surveying the denuded table, was the embodiment of a folk-lore
song. She had been in America only a year and a half, and the Lord
only knew what she had expected in that land of promise, and what
bright visions had been dispelled, and how roughly she had been
forced back upon her old point of view of the world. The girl was
actually hungry. She had no money; her clothes were worn. Her naive
coquetry of expression had quite faded from her face. Her cheek-bones
showed high, her mouth was wide and set, her eyes fixed with a sort
of stolid and despairing acquiescence. The salient points of the Slav
were to the surface, the little wings of her hope and youth folded
away. She had fallen in love, moreover, and been prevented from
attending a wedding-feast where she would have met him that day, on
account of a lack of money for a new waist, and car fare. She knew
another girl who was gay in a new gown, and at whom the desired one
had often looked with wavering eyes. Her heart was broken as she
stood there. She was one of the weariest of the wheels within wheels
of Arthur Carroll's miserable system of life.

"I don't believe there are any more eggs to make an omelet," said
Eddy.

"The grocer still trusts us," said Mrs. Carroll; "besides, he has
been paid. Eddy, dear, you must not speak so to your aunt. Run out,
if you have finished your luncheon, and ask your father when he is
going to drive."

Carroll had not gone, as usual, to the City that day.

Mrs. Carroll and Anna rose from the table and went into the den on
the left of the hall.

"You must not mind the children speaking so, Anna, dear," Mrs.
Carroll said. "They would fly at me just the same if they thought I
had said anything to hurt Arthur."

"I don't mind, Amy," Anna replied, dully. She threw herself upon the
divan with its Oriental rug, lying flat on her back, with her hands
under her head and her eyes fixed upon a golden maple bough which
waved past the window opposite. She looked very ill. She was quite
pale, and her eyes had a strange, earnest depth in dark hollows.

Mrs. Carroll looked a little more serious than was her wont as she
sat in the willow rocker and swayed slowl