"I can't help it," sobbed her mother. "You're young and you've got
more strength to bear it, but mine's all gone. I feel worse about you
than if it was myself, an' there's so much to put up with besides. I
don't feel as if I could put up with things much longer, nohow."

"Uncle Cephas ought to be ashamed of himself!" Rose cried out.

Sarah stood up. "Well, I don't s'pose I have so much to put up with
as some folks," she said, catching her breath as if it were her
dignity. "Your Uncle Cephas means well. It did seem as if them sorrel
pies were the last straw, but I hadn't ought to have minded it."

"You haven't got to eat sorrel pies, have you?" Rose asked, in a
bewildered way.

"I don't s'pose they'll be any worse than some other things we eat,"
Sarah answered, scraping the pie-board again.

"I don't see how you can."

"I guess they won't hurt us any," Sarah said, shortly, and Rose
looked abashed.

"Well, I must be going," said she.

As she went out, she looked hesitatingly at Charlotte. "Hadn't you
better?" she whispered. Charlotte shook her head, and Rose went out
into the spring sunlight. She bent her head as she went down the road
before the sweet gusts of south wind; the white apple-trees seemed to