ce I am thinking so much. I am considering her mother and the girls
and her poor, worn-out father. I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of
the Wainwrights. Mildred, you might send over a nut-cake and some soft
custard and a glass of jelly, when it stops raining, and the last number
of the "Christian Herald" and of "Harper's Monthly" might be slipped
into the basket, too--that is, if you have all done with it. Papa and I
have finished reading the serial and we will not want it again. There's
so much to read in this house."

"I'll attend to it, mamma," said Mildred. "Now what can I do to help you
before I go to my French lesson."

"Nothing, you sweetest of dears," said mother, tenderly. Mildred was her
great favorite, and nobody was jealous, for we all adored our tall, fair
sister.

So we scattered to our different occupations and did not meet again till
luncheon was announced.

Does somebody ask which of the minister's eight children is telling this
story? If you must know, I am Frances, and what I did not myself see was
all told to me at the time it happened and put down in my journal.

CHAPTER II.

AT WISHING-BRAE.

Grace Wainwright, a slender girl, in a trim tailor-made gown, stepped
off the train at Highland Station. She was pretty and distinguished
looking. Nobody would have passed her without observing that. Her four
trunks and a hat-box had been swung down to the platform by the
baggage-master, and the few passengers who, so late in the fall, stopped
at this little out-of-the-way station in the hills had all tramped
homeward through the rain, or been picked up by waiting conveyances.
There was no one to meet Grace, and it made her feel homesick and
lonely. As she stood alone on the rough unpainted boardwalk in front of
the passenger-room a sense of desolation crept into the very marrow of
her bones. She couldn't understand it, this indifference on the part of
her family. The ticket agent came out and was about to lock the door. He
was going home to his mid-day dinner.

"I am Grace Wainwright," she said, appealing to him. "Do you not suppose
some one is coming to meet me?"

"Oh, you be Dr. Wainwright's darter that's been to foreign parts, be
you? Waal, miss, the doctor he can't come because he's been sent for to
set Mr. Stone's brother's child's arm that he broke jumping over a
fence, running away from a snake. But I guess somebody'll be along soon.
Like enough your folks depended on Mr. Burden;