She involuntarily raised both hands to her ears, as if the noise
distressed her, then dropped them, straightened herself resolutely, and
answered in a pleasant contralto, whose rich notes betokened power and
repression,--

"Well, mother?"

"Your fayther's got to hev them nets mended right away, he says, an' my
han's is in the dough. Be you at them books agin?"

"Yes," said Sara; "but I'll come," rising with a sigh, and carefully
slipping a bit of paper between the leaves of her book, before she laid
it on the rough board shelf at one side of the little garret room.

As she passed directly from the stairway into the kitchen, or living-
room, her father turned from the hopeless-seeming tangle of soiled and
torn netting on the floor before him, and looked at her half wistfully
from under the glazed brim of his wide hat.

"Was you studyin', Sairay? Ye see, I've got into a bad sort o' mess
here, an' we may git our orders fur the long fish any day."

"That's all right, father! No, baby, sister can't take you now," as the
little fellow on the floor crept to her feet and set up a wail; but her
smile, and a replaced toy, silenced the cry, and brought back comfort
and complaisance to the puckered little face.

Sara then stepped to her father's side, and drew the large soiled fish-
net towards her, looking with dismay on the broken meshes; but her voice
was still bright, as she said,--