"I think so. Fanny Hancock gave it me."

"Mamma--you know you don't like it."

"No. But after all these years I couldn't turn the poor thing away."

Her mother was an old woman, clinging with an old, stubborn fidelity to
the little things of her past. But Harriett denied it. "She's not old,"
she said to herself. "Not really old."

"Harriett," her mother said one day. "I think you ought to do the
housekeeping."

"Oh, Mamma, why?" She hated the idea of this change.

"Because you'll have to do it some day."

She obeyed. But as she went her rounds and gave her orders she felt that
she was doing something not quite real, playing at being her mother as she
had played when she was a child. Then her mother had another thought.

"Harriett, I think you ought to see more of your friends, dear."

"Why?"

"Because you'll want them after I'm gone."

"I shall never _want_ anybody but you."