way, if it might be her fate to have Rodney Parker love her, to have
the engagement and the wedding follow in their happy order, she
would never ask more of God; gaining so much she would truly be
good, she would live for others then!

When she raised her face it was wet with tears.




CHAPTER II


The next morning, when the younger girls came down to breakfast,
they found only the three women in the kitchen. An odour of coffee
hung in the air. Belle was scraping burned toast at the sink, the
flying, sooty particles clinging to wet surfaces everywhere. Lydia
sat packing cold hominy in empty baking-powder tins; to be sliced
and fried for the noon meal. Mrs. Monroe, preferring an informal
kitchen breakfast to her own society in the dining room, was
standing by the kitchen table, alternating swallows from a
saucerless cup of hot coffee with indifferent mouthfuls of buttered
cold bread. She rarely went to the trouble of toasting her own
bread, spending twice the energy required to do so in protests
against the trouble.

Lydia had breakfasted an hour ago. Sally and Martie sliced bread,
pushed forward the coffee pot, and entered a spirited claim for
cream. It was Saturday morning, when Leonard slept late. Pa was
always late. Lydia was anxious to save a generous amount of cream