le puzzled by Annie's ill-timed
nonsense, and apparent hardness. "I daresay I should pin it, but the
pins drag my hair so and hurt me."

"Never think of it, mother," said mild Dora indignantly, looking daggers
at Annie.

"Of course I did not mean that, mother. I was not in earnest," Annie
made the penitent amendment.

"You are right to make the best of things," said Mrs. Millar, giving a
little shivering sigh on her own account. "It is the will of Providence.
We are in God's hands, poor Mr. Carey and all of us, as we were a year
ago--twenty years ago when you two were babies."

They were simple truisms which she uttered, but they were honest words,
which meant a great deal to her. They borrowed impressiveness from the
truthfulness of the speaker, in addition to the truth of the sayings,
and by force of sympathy told on the listening girls, quieting and
controlling them.

"Poor Mr. Carey as you say, mother," Annie caught up the words. "Well, I
suppose the Careys will be in a far worse plight than we can be, and
Cyril has been such a fool, though I don't suppose he meant much harm,
with his dandyisms and idleness and his college airs--all that he has
brought back from college."

"Hush! child," exclaimed the elder, more tolerant woman. "He has been a
silly, selfish lad, but as he will know it now, to his cost, I do not
like to hear you casting it in his teeth to-day. Perhaps it will steady
him, and then this misfortune will be a blessing so far as he is
concerned."

"Rather hard that we should all be sacrificed to prop up Cyril's weak
moral nature," muttered Annie.

"And the Russells," suggested Dora. "I have heard Colonel Russell
speaking to father, as if he and the Rector also had to do with the
bank. Oh! there is Ned Hewett, who has not passed his Cambridge
examination any more than Cyril Carey. Not that it has been Ned's fault,
or that he goes in for nothing save amusement, only he is so slow over
his books, poor fellow! He will grudge his father's having spent money
over him to no purpose more than ever now; and Lucy and Bell will be
sorry for him--they are so fond of Ned."

CHAPTER V.

PROMOTION.

At that moment a rush was heard on the stairs, and Rose and May burst
into their mother's room, Rose at the last moment bethinking herself
that she had left school, accordingly she must be grown up, or on the
brink of it, if Annie would but allow it, and therefore trying to
moderate the headlong pace