r hall. I ran down, and found
Margaret. She was in the cloak and dress I had bought for her; looking
at first very gleeful, and then very business-like, as she brought out
from under her cloak a bit of paper folded with something in it.

"What is this?" I said, finding a roll of bills.

"It's my wages, Miss Daisy. I only kept out two dollars, ma'am--I
wanted a pair of shoes so bad--and I couldn't be let go about the
house in them old shoes with holes in 'em; there was holes in both of
'em, Miss Daisy."

"But your wages, Margaret?" I said--"I have nothing to do with your
wages."

"Yes, Miss Daisy--they belongs to master, and I allowed to bring 'em
to you. They's all there so fur. It's all right."

I felt the hot shame mounting to my face. I put the money back in
Margaret's hand, and hurriedly told her to keep it; we were not at
Magnolia; she might do what she liked with the money; it was her own
earnings.

I shall never forget the girl's confounded look, and then her grin of
brilliant pleasure. I could have burst into tears as I went up the
stairs, thinking of others at home. Yet the question came too, would
my father like what I had been doing? He held the girl to be his
property and her earnings his earnings. Had I been giving Margaret a
lesson in rebellion, and preparing her to claim her rights at some
future day? Perhaps. And I made up my mind that I did not care. Live
upon stolen money I would not, any more than I could help. But was I
not living on it all the while? The old subject brought back! I
worried over it all the rest of the day, with many a look forward and
back.

As the time of the vacation drew near, I looked hard for news of my
father and mother, or tidings of their coming home. There were none.
Indeed, I got no letters at all. There was nothing to cause uneasiness;
the intervals were often long between one packet of letters and the next;
but I wanted to hear of some change now that the school year was ended.
It had been a good year to me. In that little world I had met and faced
some of the hardest temptations of the great world; they could never be
new to me again; and I had learned both my weakness and my strength.

No summons to happiness reached me that year. My vacation was spent
again with my Aunt Gary, and without Preston. September saw me quietly
settled at my studies for another school year; to be gone through with
what patience I might.

That school year had nothing to chronicle.