manage to find a shelter. 'Phemie would have no more work in her present position after this week, and Lyddy had secured no work at all; but fortune must smile upon their efforts and bring them work in time.

These obstacles seemed small indeed beside the awful thought of their father's illness. How very, very weak and ill he had looked when he was carried out of the flat on that stretcher! The girls clung together in their bed in the lodging house, and whispered about it, far into the night.

"Suppose he never comes out of that hospital?" suggested 'Phemie, in a trembling voice.

"Oh, 'Phemie! don't!" begged her sister. "He _can't_ be so ill as all that. It's just a breakdown, as that doctor said. He has overworked. He--he mustn't ever go back to that hat shop again."

"I know," breathed 'Phemie; "but what _will_ he do?"

"It isn't up to him to do anything--it's up to _us_," declared Lyddy, with some measure of her confidence returning. "Why, look at us! Two big, healthy girls, with four capable hands and the average amount of brains. I know, as city workers, we are arrant failures," she continued, in a whisper, for their room was right next to Aunt Jane's, and the partition was thin.

"Do you suppose we could do better in the country?" asked 'Phemie, slowly.

"And if I am not mistaken the house is full of old, fine furniture," observed Lyddy.

"Well!" sighed the younger sister, "we'd be sheltered, anyway. But how about eating? Lyddy! I have _such_ an appetite."

"She says we can have her share of the crops if we will pay the taxes and make the necessary repairs."

"Crops! what do you suppose is growing in those fields at this time of the year?"

"Nothing much. But if we could get out there early we might have a garden and see to it that Mr. Pritchett planted a proper crop. And we could have chickens--I'd love that," said Lyddy.

"Oh, goodness, gracious me! Wouldn't we _all_ love it--father, too? But how can we even get out there, much more live till vegetables and chickens are ripe, on nothing a week?"

"That--is--what--I--don't--see--yet," admitted Lyddy, slowly.

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