rather die than be dependent all my life, and I'm going to earn my
living if I have to break rocks to do it."




CHAPTER II

POOR JANE


Supper was over, and Gabriella, still in the dress she had worn all day,
was picking up the children's clothes from the floor of her room.
According to Mrs. Carr's hereditary habit in sorrow or sickness, Jane
had been served in bed with tea and toast, while several small hard cots
had been brought down from the attic and arranged in the available space
in the two bedrooms. As Gabriella looked at the sleeping children, who
had kicked the covering away, and lay with round rosy limbs gleaming in
the lamplight, she remembered that Arthur Peyton was coming at nine
o'clock to take her to Florrie's party, and she told herself with grim
determination that she would never go to a party again. The Berkeley
conscience, that vein of iron which lay beneath the outward softness and
incompetence of her mother and sister, held her, in spite of her
tempting youth, to the resolution she had made. She had told Jimmy that
she meant to earn her living if she had to break rocks to do it, and
Gabriella, like Pussy, came of a race that "did not easily change its
mind."

Turning to the bureau, she smoothed out the children's hair ribbons and
pinned them, in two tight little blue and pink rolls, to the pincushion.