and as for the goody books, I read them so badly that the old women
themselves come down upon me.'

'I seem to have been making the best of both worlds,' said Agnes
placidly. 'I haven't been doing anything I don't like, but I got
hold of that dress she brought home to make for little Emma Payne
and nearly finished the skirt, so that I feel as good as when one
has been twice to church on a wet Sunday. Ah, there is Catherine,
I heard the gate.'

As she spoke steps were heard approaching through the clump of trees
which sheltered the little entrance gate, and as Rose sprang to her
feet a tall figure in white and gray appeared against the background
of the sycamores, and came quickly toward the sisters.

'Dears, I am so sorry; I am afraid you have been waiting for me.
But poor Mrs. Tyson wanted me so badly that I could not leave her.
She had no one else to help her or to be with her till that eldest
girl of hers came home from work.'

'It doesn't matter,' said, Rose, as Catherine put her arm round her
shoulder; 'mamma has been fidgeting, and as for Agnes, she looks
as if she never wanted to move again.'

Catherine's clear eyes, which at the moment seemed to be full of
inward light, kindled in them by some foregoing experience, rested
kindly, but only half consciously, on her younger sister as Agnes
softly nodded and smiled to her. Evidently she was a good deal
older than the other two--she looked about six-and-twenty, a young
and vigorous woman in the prime of health and strength. The lines