y heart within
her, she was looking with startled eyes into the future and facing
facts.

It was Ellen's attempt to saddle her with a new responsibility and fit
her out to drudge on to the end of her days that had suddenly brought
the whole thing out in its true light. She was tired. Too tired to
begin all over again and raise those children for Ellen. They were
nice, healthy children and well behaved; but they were Ellen's
children, and always would be. If she went out to live with the
Robinsons, she would be Ellen's handmaid, at her beck and call, always
feeling that she must do whatever she was asked, whether she was able
or not, because she was a dependent. Never anything for love. Oh,
Ellen loved her in a way, of course, and she loved Ellen; but they had
never understood each other, and Ellen's children had been brought up
to laugh and joke at her expense as if she were somehow mentally
lacking.

"O Aunt _Ju_lia!" they would say in a tone of pity and scorn, as if
she were too ignorant to understand even their sneers.

Perhaps it was pride, but Julia Cloud felt she would rather die
than face a future like that. It was respectable, of course, and
entirely reliable. She would be fed and clothed, and nursed when
she was ill. She would be buried respectably when she died, and the
neighbors would say the Robinsons had been kind and done the right
thing by her; but Julia Cloud shuddered as she looked down the long,
dull vista of that future which was offered her, and drew back for
the first time in her life. Not that she had anything better in view,
only that she shrank from taking the step that would bring inevitable
and irrevocable grayness to the end of her days. She was not above
cooking and nursing and toiling forever if there were independence to
be had. She would have given her life if love beckoned her. She would
have gone to France as a nurse in a moment if she had not been needed
at her mother's bedside. Little children drew her powerfully, but
to be a drudge for children who did not love her, in a home where
love was the only condition that would make dependence possible,
looked intolerable.

Julia Cloud had loved everybody that would let her, and had received
very little love in return. Back in the years when she was twelve and
went to school a boy of fifteen or sixteen had been her comrade and
companion. They had played together whenever Julia had time to play,
and had roamed the woods and waded the cre