dress and go to see Mrs. Marsh, to-morrow or next day,
after I get the work done up. I could find out who she was and all about
her, and come back and tell you."

For an instant the stillness was intense, then both women turned to her.
"You!" they said, scornfully, in the same breath.

"Yes," said Grandmother, after an impressive pause, "I reckon you'll be
puttin' on your best dress and goin' up to Marshs' to see a play-actin'
woman."

"You'd have lots to do," continued Aunt Matilda, "goin' to see a woman
what ain't seen fit to return a call your Aunt made on her more'n five
years ago."

"Humph!" Grandmother snorted.

"The very idea," exclaimed Aunt Matilda.

What had seemed to Rosemary like an open path had merely led to an
insurmountable stone wall. She shrugged her shoulders good-humouredly.
"Very well," she said, "I'm sure I don't care. Suit yourselves."

[Sidenote: One Step Forward]

She began to clear away the supper dishes, for, though the others had
eaten little, they had apparently finished. Out in the kitchen, she sang
as she worked, and only a close observer would have detected a tremor in
the sweet, untrained soprano. "Anyway," thought Rosemary, "I'll put on
the flat-irons."

The fire she had built would not go out for some hours. She had used
coal ruinously in order to heat the oven for a special sort of
tea-biscuit of which Grandmother was very fond. While the fire was going
out, it would heat the irons, and then----

"One step forward whenever there is a foothold," she said to herself,
"and trust to God for the next."

That night, as fortune would have it, Grandmother and Aunt Matilda
elected to sit up late, solving a puzzle in _The Household Guardian_ for
which a Mission rocker was offered as a prize. It was long past ten
o'clock when they gave it up.

"I dunno," yawned Aunt Matilda, "as I'm partial to rockers."

"Leastways," continued Grandmother, rising to put her spectacles on the
mantel, "to the kind they give missionaries. I've seen the things they
send missionaries more'n once, in my time."

[Sidenote: More than One Way]

By eleven, the household slept, except Rosemary. As silently as a ghost,
she made her way to the attic, brought down the clean white muslin, and,
with irons scarcely hot enough, pressed it into some semblance of
freshness. She hung it in her closet, under the brown alpaca of two
seasons past, and went to sleep, peacefully.

Bright and early the next morning th