r own home and your own people, and send you out into a world where
nobody really cares for you, and where all they want of you is to make
a drudge of you! You call that providential, do you? Well, I _don't_!
And when I object, and try to save you from yourself, and offer you a
good home where you will be cared for all the rest of your days, right
among your own, where mother would have wanted to see you, you will
probably get high-headed, and say I am interfering with your rights.
But I can't help it. I've got to speak. I can't see you put the
halter around your neck to hang yourself without doing everything I
can to stop it. My own sister!"

"Why, Ellen, dear!" said Julia Cloud eagerly, sitting down beside her
sister. "You don't understand. It isn't in the least that way. I'm
sorry I had to spring it on you so suddenly and give you such a wrong
impression. You know I couldn't think of coming to live on you and
Herbert. It was kind of you to suggest it, and I am grateful and all
that; but I know how it would be to have some one else, even a sister,
come into the home, and I couldn't think of it. I have always resolved
that I would never be dependent on my relatives while I had my
health."

Ellen sat up bristling.

"And yet you are willing to go away to some strange place where nobody
knows you, and slave for a couple of little snobs!"

"O Ellen!" said Julia pleadingly. "You don't understand. I am not
going to slave. I'm just going to be a sort of mother to them. And you
oughtn't to call them snobs. They are your own brother's children."

"Own brother's children, nothing!" sneered Ellen. "He's been away so
many years he was just like a stranger when he came back the last
time, and as for the children they are just like his stuck-up wife and
her family. Yet you'll leave the children that were born and raised
close beside you, and go and slave for them. Mother! fiddlesticks!
You'll slave all right. I know you. In six weeks you'll be a drudge
for them the way you've been all your life! I know how it is, and you
may not believe it; but I have feelings for my sister, and I don't
like to see her put upon."

Ellen fumbled for her handkerchief, and managed a comely tear or two
that quite touched Julia's heart. Affection between them even when
Ellen was a child had been quite one-sided; for Ellen had always been
a selfish, spoiled little thing, and Julia had looked in vain for any
signs of tenderness. Now her heart warmed