her eyes, "I've had my cry, and feel the better for it. I'm going
to help you and papa and be brave. I'm glad I'm like you. I'm glad
I'm a true Southern girl, and that I can love as you loved; and
I would despise myself if I could invest my heart and reinvest it
like so much stock. Such a woman is cold-blooded and unnatural,
and you are the dearest little mother and wife that ever breathed."

"Oh, Millie, Millie, if I had only foreseen and guarded against
this evil day!"

"Come, dear mamma, don't always be blaming yourself for what you
did not foresee. You are eager to do your best now, and that is all
God or man can ask of us. These clouds will pass away some time,
and then the sunshine will be all the brighter."

The next few days of waiting and uncertainty were a severer ordeal
to Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred than ever. Mr. Jocelyn, bent on gaining
time, kept putting them off. His new duties upon which he had entered,
he wrote, left him only the evening hours for his quest of rooms,
and he had not succeeded in finding any that were suitable. Thus
they expected something definite by every mail, but each day brought
renewed disappointment. At last Mildred wrote that she would come
down herself if he did not decide upon something at once.

The morning after this letter was despatched the young girl took
her work out under some wide-boughed hemlocks that stood beside
the quiet country road, along which a farmer occasionally jogged
to the village beyond, but which at that hour was usually quite
deserted. Fred and Minnie were with her, and amused themselves
by building little log huts with the dry sticks thickly scattered