"I need it terrably, Hannah," I said.

"You'd ought to get it from your mother, then, Miss Barbara. The last
time I gave you some you paid it back in postage stamps, and I haven't
written a letter since. They're all stuck together now, and a totle
loss."

"Very well," I said, fridgidly. "But the next time you break
anything----"

"How much do you want?" she asked.

I took a quick look at her, and I saw at once that she had desided to
lend it to me and then run and tell mother, beginning, "I think you'd
ought to know, Mrs. Archibald----"

"Nothing doing, Hannah," I said, in a most dignafied manner. "But I
think you are an old Clam, and I don't mind saying so."

I was now thrown on my own resourses, and very bitter. I seemed to have
no Friends, at a time when I needed them most, when I was, as one may
say, "standing with reluctent feet, where the brook and river meet."

Tonight I am no longer sick of Life, as I was then. My throws of anguish
have departed. But I was then uterly reckless, and even considered
running away and going on the stage myself.

I have long desired a Career for mvself, anyhow. I have a good mind, and
learn easily, and I am not a Paracite. The idea of being such has always