weakness and dependence; and now positive unhappiness is added to
his other misfortunes, although I think my little note will do him
no harm"--she dreamed that it might be carried next to his heart
instead of mouldering where the faithless Jotham had dropped it.
"I shall not punish him for his family's harsh pride, from which he
suffers even more than I do. Turn, turn, fortune's wheel! We are
down now, but that only proves that we must soon come up again. Being
poor and living in a tenement isn't so dreadful as I feared, and
we can stand it for a while. As stout Mrs. Wheaton says, 'There's
vorse troubles hin the vorld.' Now that we know and have faced the
worst we can turn our hopes and thoughts toward the best."

Poor child! It was well the future was veiled.

The mode of Belle's activity was a problem, but that incipient
young woman practically decided it herself. She was outspoken in
her preference.

"I don't want to work cooped up at home," she said. "I'd go wild
if I had to sit and stitch all day. School half killed me, although
there was always some excitement to be had in breaking the rules."

"Naughty Belle!" cried her mother.

"Never naughty when you coax, mamma. I'd have been a saint if they'd
only taken your tactics with me, but they didn't know enough, thank
fortune, so I had my fun. If they had only looked at me as you do,
and put me on my honor, and appealed to my better feelings and all
that, and laughed with me and at me now and then, I'd been fool
enough to have kept every rule. You always knew, mamma, just how