ing back again; but I'm going up for always,
as far as a person can lay out ahead of her. Do you care?"

Yes she cared. The childish mouth quivered, the pretty blue-eyed face
fell, the ready tears flowed fast. I noticed every detail with savage
comfort. It was more than I deserved, for, though I loved her
passionately, I had ever been too much wrapped in self to have been very
kind and lovable to her.

"Who will tell me stories now?"

It was a habit of mine to relate stories to her out of my own fertile
imagination. In return for this she kept secret the fact that I sat up
and wrote when I should have been in bed. I was obliged to take some
means of inducing her to keep silence, as she--even Gertie, who firmly
believed in me--on waking once or twice at unearthly hours and discovering
me in pursuit of my nightly task, had been so alarmed for my sanity that
I had the greatest work to prevent her from yelling to father and mother
on the spot. But I bound her to secrecy, and took a strange delight in
bringing to her face with my stories the laughter, the wide-eyed wonder,
or the tears--just as my humour dictated.

"You'll easily get someone else to tell you stories."

"Not like yours. And who will take my part when Horace bullies me?"

I pressed her to me.

"Gertie, Gertie, promise me you will love me a little always, and never,
never forget me. Promise me."

And with a weakly glint of winter sunshine turning her hair to gold, and
with her head on my shoulder, Gertie promised--promised with the soluble
promise of a butterfly-natured child.

SELF-ANALYSIS

N.B.--This is dull and egotistical. Better skip it. That's my
advice--S. P. M.

As a tiny child I was filled with dreams of the great things I was to do
when grown up. My ambition was as boundless as the mighty bush in which I
have always lived. As I grew it dawned upon me that I was a girl--the
makings of a woman! Only a girl--merely this and nothing more. It came
home to me as a great blow that it was only men who could take the world
by its ears and conquer their fate, while women, metaphorically speaking,
were forced to sit with tied hands and patiently suffer as the waves of
fate tossed them hither and thither, battering and bruising without
mercy. Familiarity made me used to this yoke; I recovered from the
disappointment of being a girl, and was reconciled to that part of my
fate. In fact, I found that being a girl was quite pleasant until a
hideous