fruit, with the untouched silver spoon at hand. There sat her
grandmother behind the butter plate. There stood Hannah, white capped
and white aproned, holding the silver serving tray like a petrified
statue of severity, and not one of them spoke, but their silence,
their dignified, reproachful silence was infinitely worse than a
torrent of invective. How Annie wished they would speak. How she
wished that she could speak herself, but she knew better than to even
offer an excuse for her tardiness. Well she knew that the stony
silence which would meet that would be worse, much worse than this.
So she slid into her place opposite her Aunt Jane, and began her own
task of dividing into sections the omelet which was quite flat
because she was late, and seemed to reproach her in a miserable,
low-down sort of fashion.

However, there was in the girl's heart a little glint of youthful
joy, which was unusual. She had met Mr. Von Rosen and had forgotten
herself, that is at first, and he had looked kindly at her. There was
no foolish hope in little Annie Eustace's heart; there would be no
spire of aspiration added to her dreams because of the meeting, but
she tasted the sweet of approbation, and it was a tonic which she
sorely needed, and which inspired her to self-assertion in a
childishly naughty and mischievous way. It was after supper that
evening, that Annie strolled a little way down the street, taking
advantage of Miss Bessy Dicky's dropping in for a call, to slink
unobserved out of her shadowy corner, for the Eustaces were fond of
sitting in the twilight. The wind had come up, the violent strong
wind which comes out of the south, and Annie walked very near the
barberry hedge which surrounded Doctor Sturtevant's grounds, and the
green muslin lashed against it to its undoing. When Annie returned,
the skirt was devastated and Aunt Harriet decreed that it could not