eks in company. Then his
people moved away, and he had kissed her good-by and told her that
some day he was coming back to get her. It was a childish affection,
but it was the only kiss of that kind she had to remember.

The boy had written to her for a whole year, when one day there came a
letter from his grandmother telling how he was drowned in saving the
life of a little child; and Julia Cloud had put the memory of that
kiss away as the only bright thing in her life that belonged wholly to
herself, and plodded patiently on. The tears that she shed in secret
were never allowed to trouble her family, and gradually the pain had
grown into a great calm. No one ever came her way to touch her heart
again. Only little children brought the wistful look to her eyes, and
a wonder whether people had it made up to them in heaven when they had
failed of the natural things of this life.

Julia Cloud was not one to pity herself. She was sane, healthy, and
not naturally morbid; but to-night, for some reason, the gray sky, and
the gray, sodden earth, and the gray road of the future had got her in
their clutches, and she could not get away from them. With straining
eyes she searched the little bit of west between the orchard tree that
always showed a sunset if there was one; but no streak of orange,
rose, or gold broke the sullen clouds.

Well, what was she going to do, anyway? Ellen's question seemed to
ring on stridently in her ears; she tried to face it looking down the
gray road into the gray sky.

She had the house, but there were taxes to pay, and there would be
repairs every little while to eat up the infinitesimal income which
was left her, when all the expenses of her mother's long illness and
death were paid. They had been spending their principal. It could not
have been helped. In all, she knew, she had something like two hundred
dollars a year remaining. Not enough to board her if she tried to
board anywhere, to say nothing of clothing. All this had been fully
and exhaustively commented upon by Ellen Robinson during the
afternoon.

The house might be rented, of course--though it was too antiquated and
shabby-looking to bring much--if Julia was not "so ridiculously
sentimental about it." Julia had really very little sentiment
connected with the house, but Ellen had chosen to think she had; so it
amounted to the same thing as far as the argument went. Julia knew in
her own heart that the only thing that held her to th