way was in
semi-darkness, the candles had not yet been lighted. It was a cold
November afternoon and the great house was chill and silent.

Entering the drawing room, she placed the candles upon the mantelpiece.
Her breath was like a small gray cloud before her; and her dress, too,
was the color of the mist and soft and clinging.

"Work, health and love," she murmured quietly, striking a match and
watching the candles flicker and flare until finally they burned with a
steady glow. "If one has these three things in life as I have, what
else is worth worrying over?" Then the sigh that came in answer to her
own question almost extinguished the candle flames.

"There are bills and boarders of course--too many of the first and at
present none of the second," she added with a kind of whimsical smile.
"But, oh dear, what a trying Thanksgiving day this has been, when even
the Camp Fire ideals won't comfort me! Dick 'way off in Germany, Polly
and Esther studying in New York and me face to face with my failure to
save the old house. It is not worth while pretending; the house must
be sold and mother and I shall have to find some other place to live.
In the morning I will go and tell Judge Maynard that I give up."

Sadly Betty Ashton glanced about the familiar room. The portraits of
her New England ancestors appeared to gaze coldly and reproachfully
down upon her. They had not been of the stuff of which failures are
made. Her grand piano was closed and dusty, the window blinds were
partly pulled down, and although a fire was laid in the grate, it was
not burning. Dust, cold and an unaccustomed atmosphere of neglect
enveloped everything.

With a lifting of her head and a tightening of her lips that gave her
face a new expression, the girl suddenly pulled open a table drawer and
began fiercely to polish the top of the piano while she talked.

"There is no reason why I should allow this place to look so dismal
just because things have gone wrong with my efforts to keep boarders
and continue my work at school. As no one is coming to see me I can't
afford a fire, but I'll open the piano and place Esther's song, 'The
Soul's Desire,' on the music rack, just as though she were at home to
sing it for me. Dick's dull old books shall lie here on the table
where he used to leave them, near this red rose that John Everett
brought me this morning. Somehow the rose makes me think of Polly. It
is so radiant. How curious that c