he did
not know herself, and stopped amazed to find that she was weeping.

A cow, wearied with her attempt to get some nourishment out of the tough
hyacinth, moved out of the river, and, shaking the water from her wet
flanks, started home. Hertha suddenly found herself hungry and tired and
very much ashamed. The excitement that had brought the tears to her
cheeks was gone, leaving a dull depression behind. She turned on her
way, and as her mother's cabin came in sight, with a light in the
window, for it was late, she felt relieved and safe. After all, nothing
had happened, nothing. She was the same girl she had always been and
needed only to forget the happenings of the morning.

Her supper tasted good, and when it was over she thought that she was
ready to write a letter to Tom. The table cleared, however, and her pen
in hand, she could not find a word to say. How could she forget those
two meetings, the only events worth recording, of which Tom must never
learn a word? So she bit her pen, and at length, at her mother's
suggestion, postponed the letter to another day.

"Honey-lamb," mammy said, "you' eyes look close ter tears. Don't you
want Ellen to go wid yer down ter de dock? She jes' step out a minute
ter see de Theodore Roosevelt Jackson baby, but she'll come ef I call."

"Don't call, Mammy; I don't want to go. Miss Patty kept me running all
day and I'm tired. I'll stay here with you and read."

"Dar are de books, den; but you mostly knows 'em by heart."

"I suppose I do," Hertha said drearily.

She picked up _The Life of Abraham Lincoln_. Almost all the books in the
Williams household had been bought of agents and paid for on the
installment plan. There were volumes of universal knowledge and other
volumes of the world's best literature--all eminently instructive, but
none calculated to soothe an aching heart. Turning over the pages idly,
looking at a picture here, reading a paragraph there, Hertha occupied a
few minutes and then went to where her mother sat in her big,
comfortable chair. Leaning over, she put her arms around the old woman's
neck.

"Um, um," the mother crooned, patting the girl's hands.

"Sing for me, Mammy."

"You must git inter my lap, den. Reckon it'll hold a lil' flower like
you."

"This is better." The girl knelt so that her head came on her mother's
breast. "Now sing."

"What'll I sing fer yer?"

"Oh, anything. Sing 'Nobody knows de trouble I's seen.'"

"Laws, chile, does