way of keeping separate the
truths of experience and the forms of inherited belief. With Rosie they
instinctively called a truce. Ellen will soon be gone, their attitude
said, so let's not fight any more. To show their sincerity, Terry
polished Ellen's shoes and asked if there was anything more he could do,
and Jack ran numberless errands without once asking payment.

Mrs. O'Brien more than made up for the indifference of the rest of the
family. Her grief at Ellen's departure was very genuine and very loud.
Ellen had always seemed to her mother a paragon of beauty and talent and
now she had made a fine match and was going off to St. Louie, poor girl,
where she'd be far away from her own people in case of illness or
distress. Mrs. O'Brien was so nearly overcome at the actual moment of
farewell that Jamie and Terry had to drag her off to a soda fountain
before the train was fairly started.

Ellen, too, was affected at the last as Rosie had never seen her
affected. She kissed Rosie, then looked at her a moment sadly. "Say,
kid," she said, "I'm sorry we haven't been better friends. I'm afraid it
was my fault."

Rosie gulped. "I was as much to blame as you. I see it now."

Ellen touched Rosie's cheek impulsively. "If ever I get a home of my
own in St. Louie, will you come and make me a visit?"

Rosie's thought was: "If ever you get a home of your own, you'll never
remember me." Her spoken answer, though, was all that it should be:
"Ellen, I'd love to."

Rosie, you see, knew Ellen's character pretty well. What she did not
know and could not as yet know was this: that the Ellen of tomorrow
might not be quite the Ellen of today; that life probably held
experiences for Ellen that would at last make her look back on home and
family with a new understanding and a feeling of genuine tenderness.

Ellen's train pulled out and Rosie watched it go with a sigh of relief.
The chapter of Family Chronicles entitled Ellen was finished. That is,
it was finished so far as any new interest was concerned. Yet, like the
hand of a dead man touching the living through the clauses of a last
will, so Ellen, though gone, continued to touch Rosie on a spot already
sensitive beyond endurance.

Rosie had not spoken of George Riley during Ellen's last week. She had
tried to suppress even the thought of him. Now the time was come when
she had again to think of him, and she was so tired and weary of the
whole problem that she felt unequal to the