hing had happened to me than to your tea-set."

Patty Row slipped out of the house, and gently closed the door behind her.
She had meant to stay and speak up for Mona, but something told her that
there would be no need for that.

Poor Mrs. Barnes dropped heavily into her seat. "I wouldn't then, dear.
There's worse disasters than--than broken china."

Mona's sobs ceased abruptly. She was so astonished at her grandmother's
manner of taking her trouble, she could scarcely believe her senses.
"But I--I thought you prized it so, granny--above everything?"

"So I did," said granny, pathetically. "I think I prized it too much,
but when you get old, child, and--and the end of life's journey is in
sight, you--you--well, somehow, these things don't seem to matter so much.
'Tis you will be the loser, dearie. When I'm gone the things will be
yours. I've had a good many years with my old treasures for company,
so I can't complain."

Mona stood looking at her grandmother with a dawning fear on her face.
"Granny, you ain't ill, are you? You don't feel bad, do you?"

Mrs. Barnes shook her head. "No, I ain't ill, only a bit tired.
It's just that the things that used to matter don't seem to, now,
and those that--that, well, those that did seem to me to come second,
they matter most--they seem to be the only ones that matter at all."

Patty Row had done well to go away and leave the two alone just then.
Granny, with a new sense of peace resting on her, which even the loss of
her cherished treasures could not disturb, and Mona, with a strange
seriousness, a foreboding of coming trouble on her, which awakened her
heart to a new sympathy.

"Why, child, how you must have cried to swell your eyes up like that."
Granny, rousing herself at last out of a day-dream, for the first time
noticed poor Mona's face. "Isn't your head aching?"

"Oh, dreadfully," sighed Mona, realizing for the first time how acute the
pain was.

"Didn't I see Patty here when I came in? Where has she gone?"

"I don't know."

"Patty didn't break the things, did she?"

"Oh, no."

"Did she tell you what she came about?"

"To tell me you were having tea with mother."

"But there was more than that. She came to ask if you'd go to Sunday
School with her on Sunday. Her teacher told her to ask you. You used to
go, didn't you? Why have you given it up?"

Mona nodded, but she coloured a little. "I thought the girls--all knew
about--about my running