condition as is possible to anyone.

It was always hardest in the spring. Once upon a time the Old Lady--when
she had not been the Old Lady, but pretty, wilful, high-spirited
Margaret Lloyd--had loved springs; now she hated them because they hurt
her; and this particular spring of this particular May chapter hurt her
more than any that had gone before. The Old Lady felt as if she could
NOT endure the ache of it. Everything hurt her--the new green tips on
the firs, the fairy mists down in the little beech hollow below the
house, the fresh smell of the red earth Crooked Jack spaded up in her
garden. The Old Lady lay awake all one moonlit night and cried for very
heartache. She even forgot her body hunger in her soul hunger; and the
Old Lady had been hungry, more or less, all that week. She was living on
store biscuits and water, so that she might be able to pay Crooked Jack
for digging her garden. When the pale, lovely dawn-colour came stealing
up the sky behind the spruces, the Old Lady buried her face in her
pillow and refused to look at it.

"I hate the new day," she said rebelliously. "It will be just like all
the other hard, common days. I don't want to get up and live it. And,
oh, to think that long ago I reached out my hands joyfully to every
new day, as to a friend who was bringing me good tidings! I loved the
mornings then--sunny or gray, they were as delightful as an unread
book--and now I hate them--hate them--hate them!"

But the Old Lady got up nevertheless, for she knew Crooked Jack would
be coming early to finish the garden. She arranged her beautiful, thick,
white hair very carefully, and put on her purple silk dress with the
little gold spots in it. The Old Lady always wore silk from motives of
economy. It was much cheaper to wear a silk dress that had belonged to
her mother than to buy new print at the store. The Old Lady had plenty
of silk dresses which had belonged to her mother. She wore them morning,
noon, and night, and Spencervale people considered it an additional
evidence of her pride. As for the fashion of them, it was, of course,
just because she was too mean to have them made over. They did not dream
that the Old Lady never put on one of the silk dresses without agonizing
over its unfashionableness, and that even the eyes of Crooked Jack cast
on her antique flounces and overskirts was almost more than her feminine
vanity could endure.

In spite of the fact that the Old Lady had not welcom