ust like your poor father in the
way you have about money; I never saw anyone so unpractical as he was.
I'm sure half his bills are unpaid yet, and never will be paid. I hope
you won't be like _him_, I'm sure----"

"I hope I shall be like him in every possible respect," said Janetta,
with compressed lips. She rose as she spoke and caught up the basket of
socks that she was mending. "I don't know how you can bear to speak of
him in that slighting manner," she went on, almost passionately. "He was
the best, the kindest of men, and I cannot bear to hear it." And then
she hurriedly left the room and went into her father's little
surgery--as it had once been called--to relieve her overcharged heart
with a burst of weeping. It was not often that Janetta lost patience,
but a word against her father was sufficient to upset her self-command
nowadays. She rested her head against the well-worn arm-chair where he
used to sit, and kissed the back of it, and bedewed it with her tears.

"Poor father! dear father!" she murmured. "Oh, if only you were here, I
could bear anything! Or if she had loved you as you deserved, I could
bear with her and work for her willingly--cheerfully. But when she
speaks against you, father dear, how _can_ I live with her? And yet he
told me to take care of her, and I said I would. He called me 'his
faithful Janet.' I do not want to be unfaithful, but--oh father, father,
it is hard to live without you!"

The gathering shades of the wintry day began to gather round her; but
Janetta, her face buried in the depths of the arm-chair, was oblivious
of time. It was almost dark before little Tiny came running in with
cries of terror to summon her sister to Mrs. Colwyn's help.

"Mamma's ill--I think she's dying. Come, Janet, come," cried the child.
And Janetta hurried back to the dining-room.

She found Mrs. Colwyn on the sofa in a state of apparent stupor. For
this at first Janetta saw no reason, and was on the point of sending for
a doctor, when her eye fell upon a black object which had rolled from
the sofa to the ground. Janetta looked at it and stood transfixed.

There was no need to send for a doctor. And Janetta saw at once that she
could not be spared from home. The wretched woman had found a solace
from her woes, real and imaginary, in the brandy bottle.

CHAPTER XIV.

JANETTA'S FAILURE.

The terrible certainty that Janetta had now acquired of Mrs. Colwyn's
inability to control herself dec