to droop, but she
saw nothing of it all. She only wanted to get inside and shut and bolt
the door, and be alone with herself and her anger.

"There!" she cried passionately, flinging the wreath across the kitchen,
"take that! I hate you--I hate the sight of you!" She would have cried,
but that she had made up her mind that she would not. "I'll never wear
the hateful thing--I couldn't! If I was to meet that girl when I'd got it
on I--I'd never get over it! And there's all my money gone; wasted, and--
and----" At last the tears did come, in spite of her, and Mona's heart
felt relieved.

She picked out the paper bag from inside the fender, and, carrying it
upstairs, thrust it inside the lid of her box. "There! and I hope I'll
never see the old thing ever any more, and then, p'raps, in time I'll
forget all about it."

As she went down the stairs again to the kitchen she remembered that her
father would be home in a few minutes to his dinner, and that she had to
boil some potatoes. "Oh, dear--I wish--I wish----" But what was the use
of wishing! She had the forget-me-nots she had so longed for--and what
was the result!

"I'll never, never wish for anything again," she thought ruefully,
"but I suppose that wishing you'd got something, and wishing you
hadn't forgot something, are two different things, though both make you
feel miserable," she added gloomily.

For a moment she sat, overwhelmed by all that she had done and had left
undone. The emptiness and silence of the house brought to her a sense of
loneliness. The street outside was empty and silent too, except for two
old women who walked by with heavy, dragging steps. One of the two was
talking in a patient, pathetic voice, but loudly, for her companion was
deaf.

"There's no cure for trouble like work, I know that. I've had more'n my
share of trouble, and if it hadn't been that I'd got the children to care
for, and my work cut out to get 'em bread to eat, I'd have give in;
I couldn't have borne all I've had to bear----"

The words reached Mona distinctly through the silence. She rose to her
feet. "P'raps work'll help me to bear mine," she thought bitterly.
"When my man and my two boys was drowned that winter, I'd have gone out of
my mind if I hadn't had to work to keep a home for the others----"
The voices died away in the distance, and Mona's bitterness died away too.

"Her man, and her two boys--three of them dead, all drowned in one day--
oh,