dear, gentle mother who had always helped
her. Her mother had so screened her awkwardness from public notice that
Anna had scarcely been aware of it. Her Aunt Christina had said, when
she was summoned four years ago to manage her brother's household,
"Your wife has ruined Anna, brother. I shall have hard work to improve
her."

Anna was not crying now about her aunt's constant fault-finding; there
was something in her grief more bitter even than the tears she shed for
her mother; it seemed to the girl that day by day she was becoming more
and more clumsy and stupid; she broke the crockery, and even the
furniture; she spoiled her frocks; and, worst of all, she had more than
once met her father's kind blue eyes fixed on her with a look of sadness
that went to her heart. Did he, too, think that she would never be
useful to herself or to any one?

At this thought her tears came more freely, and she pressed her hot face
against the tree.

"I wonder why I was made!" she sobbed.

There came a sharp crackling sound, as the twigs and pine-needles
snapped under a heavy tread.

Anna caught up her white apron and vigorously rubbed her eyes; then she
hurried out to the path from her shelter among the trees.

In another minute her arms were round her father, and she was kissing
him on both cheeks.

[Sidenote: A Startling Face]

George Fasch kissed her and patted her shoulder; then a suppressed sob
caught his ear. He held Anna away from him, and looked at her face.

It was red and green in streaks, and her eyes were red and inflamed. The
father was startled by her appearance.

"What is the matter, dear child?" he said. "You are ill."

Then his eyes fell on her apron. Its crumpled state, and the red and
green smears on it, showed the use to which it had been put, and he
began to guess what had happened.

Anna hung her head.

"I was crying and I leaned against a tree. Oh, dear, it was a clean
apron! Aunt will be vexed."

Her father sighed, but he pitied her confusion.

"Why did you cry, my child?" he said, half-tenderly, half in rebuke.
"Aunt Christina means well, though she speaks abruptly."

He only provoked fresh tears, but Anna tried so hard to keep them back
that she was soon calm again.

"I am not vexed with Aunt Christina for scolding me," she said; "I
deserved it; I am sorry for myself."

"Well, well," he said cheerfully, "we cannot expect old heads on young
shoulders." His honest, sunburned face was slig