and they seemed to freeze up her whole heart. She got up off her
knees and walked away with her pretty head in the air, and wouldn't
speak to me for the evening; and the next day she come to me quick
and haughty like, and said that if I gave her a stepfather she would
not live with me; she would go to her Aunt Fanny, and her Aunt Fanny
would take her to Paris, and there she would see life. Fanny was my
youngest sister, and she was married to a traveler for one of the big
shops, and often went about with her husband and had a gay time. She
had no children of her own, and I knew she envied me my Lovedy beyond
words.

"I was so hurt with Lovedy for saying she would leave me for her
Aunt Fanny, that I said, bitter and sharp, she might do as she liked,
and that I did not care.

"Then she turned very red and went away and sat down and wrote a
letter, and I knew she had made up her mind to leave me. Still I
wasn't really frightened. I said to myself, I'll pretend to let her
have her own way, and she'll come round fast enough; and I began to
get ready for my wedding, and took no heed of Lovedy. The night
before I was married she came to me again. She was white as a sheet,
and all the hardness had gone out of her.

"'Mother, mother, mother,' she said, and she put her dear, bonnie
arms round me and clasped me tight to her. 'Mother, give him up, for
Lovedy's sake; it will break my heart, mother. Mother, I am jealous;
I must have you altogether or not at all. Stay at home with your own
Lovedy, for pity's sake, for pity's sake.'

"Of course I soothed her and petted her, and I think--I do think now