lia was set on staying there. I never thought Julia was selfish;
but I s'pose she doesn't realize how hard it is for Ellen, living that
way between two houses. Julia'll go to live with Ellen now, of course.
It's real good of Herbert Robinson to ask her. Julia ought to
appreciate having relatives like that."

"Relatives nothing!" said Mr. Ambrose, pulling off his coat and
hanging it over a chair. "She'll be a fool if she goes! She's slaved
all her life, and she deserves a little rest now. If she goes out to
Herbert Robinson's, she won't be allowed to call her eyelashes her
own; you mark my words!"

"Well, what else can she do?" said his wife. "She hasn't any husband
or children, and I think she'll be mighty well off to get a good home.
Men are awful hard on each other, Ambrose. I always knew that."

Julia Cloud meanwhile, with a last look at the neat rooms, put out her
lights, and went to bed, but not to sleep. She was so excited that the
darkness seemed luminous about her. She was trying to think how those
two children would look grown up. Allison was nineteen and Leslie
nearly seventeen now. Their mother had been dead five years, and they
had been in boarding-schools. Their guardian was an old gentleman, a
friend of their mother's. That was about all she knew concerning them.
Would they seem like strangers, she wondered, or would there be enough
resemblance to recall the dear girl and boy of the years that were
gone? How she clung to those cookies with hope! There was some
remembrance left, or they would not have put cookies in a telegram.
How impetuous and just like Allison, the boy, that telegram had
sounded!

It was scarcely daylight when Julia Cloud arose and went down to the
kitchen to bake the cookies; and the preparations she made for baking
pies and doughnuts and other toothsome dainties would lead one to
suppose that she was expecting to feed a regiment for a week at
least.

She filled the day with hard work, as she had been wont to do, and
never once thought of gray sunsets or dreary futures. Not even the
thought of her sister Ellen came to trouble her as she put the house
in order, filled her pantry with good things to eat, and set the table
for three with all the best things the house afforded.

At evening she stood once more beside the front window, looking out
sunsetward. There was nothing gray about either sky or road or
landscape now. There had been brilliant sunshine all day long, and the
sky l