realised that she should burst out crying if she waited to hear another
word, and she realised that of late she seemed always to be bursting out
crying before one or the other of those two. She could not help it. They
always seemed to be implying something slighting or scathing. They were
always putting her in the wrong and hurting her feelings.

The day was damp and chill, but she put on her hat and ran out into the
park. She went down the avenue and turned into a coppice. There, among
the wet bracken, she sank down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree and
huddled herself in a small heap, her head on her arms, actually wailing.

"Oh, mother! Oh, mother!" she cried hysterically. "Oh, I do wish you
would come. I'm so cold, mother; I'm so ill! I can't bear it! It seems
as if you'd forgotten all about me! You're all so happy in New York that
perhaps you have forgotten--perhaps you have! Oh, don't, mother--don't!"

It was a month later that through the vicar's wife she reached a
discovery and a climax. She had heard one morning from this lady of a
misfortune which had befallen a small farmer. It was a misfortune which
was an actual catastrophe to a man in his position. His house had caught
fire during a gale of wind and the fire had spread to the outbuildings
and rickyard and swept away all his belongings, his house, his
furniture, his hayricks, and stored grain, and even his few cows and
horses. He had been a poor, hard-working fellow, and his small insurance
had lapsed the day before the fire. He was absolutely ruined, and
with his wife and six children stood face to face with beggary and
starvation.

Rosalie Anstruthers entered the vicarage to find the poor woman who was
his companion in calamity sobbing in the hall. A child of a few weeks