n tied down, and I've come
to the conclusion that while there may have been a time when a woman
could keep a house, tend a garden, sew and spin and raise twelve
children, things are different now; life is more complicated. You
owe your husband something, you owe yourself something. I want to get
on, to study and travel, to be a companion to my husband. I don't want
to be a mere upper servant!"

"No, of course not," assented Mrs. Porter, vaguely, soothingly.

"Well, if we are going to stay here, I'll light the stove," Margaret
said after a pause. "B-r-r-r! this room gets cold with the windows
open! I wonder why Kelly doesn't bring us more wood?"

"I guess--I'll stay!" Mrs. Porter said uncertainly, following her to
the big book closet off the schoolroom, where a little gas stove and
a small china closet occupied one wide shelf. The water for the tea
and bouillon was put over the flame in a tiny enamelled saucepan;
they set forth on a fringed napkin crackers and sugar and spoons.

At this point, a small girl of eleven with a brilliant, tawny head,
and a wide and toothless smile, opened the door cautiously, and said,
blinking rapidly with excitement,--

"Mark, Mother theth pleath may thee come in?"

This was Rebecca, one of Margaret's five younger brothers and
sisters, and a pupil of the school herself. Margaret smiled at
the eager little face.

"Hello, darling! Is Mother here? Certainly she can! I believe,"--she
said, turning, suddenly radiant, to Mrs. Porter,--"I'll just bet you
she's brought us some lunch!"

"Thee brought uth our luncheth--eggth and thpith caketh and everything!"
exulted Rebecca, vanishing, and a moment later Mrs. Paget appeared.

She was a tall woman, slender but large of build, and showing, under a
shabby raincoat and well pinned-up skirt, the gracious generous lines
of shoulders and hips, the deep-bosomed erect figure that is rarely
seen except in old daguerreotypes, or the ideal of some artist two
generations ago. The storm to-day had blown an unusual color into her
thin cheeks, her bright, deep eyes were like Margaret's, but the hair
that once had shown an equally golden lustre was dull and smooth now,
and touched with gray. She came in smiling, and a little breathless.

"Mother, you didn't come out in all this rain just to bring us our
lunches!" Margaret protested, kissing the cold, fresh face.

"Well, look at the lunch you silly girls were going to eat!"
Mrs. Paget protested in turn,