is a whole basketful of
the boys' socks that need mending and--"

"Pam!" interrupted Theo, desperately, turning over her shoulder a face
more like the face of some young Spanish gipsy than that of a poor
English solicitor's daughter. "Pam, I should really like to know if life
is ever worth having, if everybody's life is like ours, or if there are
really such people as we read of in books."

"You have been reading some ridiculous novel again," said Pamela,
sententiously. "If you would be a little more sensible, and less
romantic, Theodora, it would be a great deal better for all of us. What
have you been reading?"

The capable gipsy face turned to the window again half-impatiently.

"I have been reading nothing to-day," was the answer. "I should think
you knew that--on Saturday, with everything to do, and the shopping to
attend to, and mamma scolding every one because the butcher's bill can't
be paid. I was reading Jane Eyre, though, last night. Did you ever read
Jane Eyre, Pamela?"

"I always have too much to do in attending to my duty," said Pamela,
"without wasting my time in that manner. I should never find time to
read Jane Eyre in twenty years. I wish I could."

"I wish you could, too," said Theo, meditatively. "I wish there was no
such thing as duty. Duty always appears to me to be the very thing we
don't want to do."

"Just at present, it is your duty to attend to those socks of Ralph and
Arthur's," put in Pamela, dryly. "Perhaps you had better see to it at
once, as tea will be ready soon, and you will have to cut bread for the
children."

The girl turned away from the window with a sigh. Her discussions on
subjects of this kind always ended in the same unsatisfactory manner;
and really her young life was far from being a pleasant one. As the next
in age to Pamela, though so many years lay between them, a hundred petty
cares fell on her girlish shoulders, and tried her patience greatly with
their weight, sometimes. And in the hard family struggle for everyday
necessities there was too much of commonplace reality to admit of much
poetry. The wearisome battling with life's needs had left the mother, as
it leaves thousands of women, haggard, careworn, and not too smooth in
disposition. There was no romance about her. She had fairly forgotten
her girlhood, it seemed to lie so far behind; and even the unconquerable
mother-love, that gave rise to her anxieties, had a touch of hardness
about it. And Pamela ha