er at Christmas. She picked it up and opened it, and as she
did so the colour rushed over her face. In one of the pockets was the
eighteenpence which had been given to her to pay John Darbie with.
"I--I suppose I ought to have given it to mother, but it went right out of
my head." She completed her dressing in a thoughtful mood, but she did
find, and put on, her old morning dress. "I suppose I had better tell
her--about the money." She put the blue purse in a drawer, however,
and tossed in a lot of things on top of it.

When at last she got downstairs it was already past half-past eight,
and the fire was burning low again. "Oh, dear," she cried, irritably,
"how ever am I going to get breakfast with a fire like that and how am I
to know what to get or where anything is kept. I think I might have had a
day or two given me to settle down in. I s'pose I'd better get some
sticks first and make the fire up. Bother the old thing, it only went out
just to vex me!"

She was feeling hungry and impatient, and out of tune with everything.
At Hillside she would have been just sitting down to a comfortable meal
which had cost her no trouble to get. For the moment she wished she was
back there again.

As she returned to the kitchen with her hands full of wood, her mother
came down the stairs. She looked very white and ill, and very fragile,
but she was fully dressed.

"I thought you were too bad to get up," said Mona, unsmilingly.
"I was going to bring you up some breakfast as soon as I could,
but the silly old fire was gone down----"

"I was afraid it would. That was why I got up. I couldn't be still,
I was so fidgeted about your father's breakfast. He'll be home for it in
a few minutes. He's had a busy morning, and must want something."

Mona looked glummer than ever. "I never had to get up early at granny's,"
she said in a reproachful voice. "I ain't accustomed to it. I s'pose I
shall have to get so."

"Did you let your grandmother--did your grandmother come down first and
get things ready for you?" asked Lucy, surprised; and something in her
voice, or words, made Mona feel ashamed, instead of proud of the fact.

"Granny liked getting up early," she said, excusingly. Lucy did not make
any comment, and Mona felt more ashamed than if she had.

"Hasn't father had his breakfast yet?" she asked presently. "He always
used to come home for it at eight."

"He did to-day, but you see there wasn't any. The fire