Late the following afternoon Desiré stood on the doorstep, watching Priscilla hopping down the dusty road to see a little friend. Early that morning Jack had gone to Meteghan to settle up affairs with Nicolas and Yves, and, to please Desiré, to price an outfit for a traveling store. The sisters, greatly hindered by René, had spent the day going over keepsakes and household belongings of all kinds, trying to decide what they would keep and what they must dispose of.

“Are you going to sell all our things, Dissy? Even Mother’s chair?”

“I’m afraid so, dear. You see we can’t carry furniture around with us when we don’t know where or how we are going to live. You have her little silver locket for a keepsake, and I have her prayerbook. We really don’t need anything to remember her by.”

“No; and Jack has nôtre père’s watch. But, oh, I—I wish we weren’t going. I’m sort of afraid!”

“Afraid!” chided Desiré, although her own heart was filled with the nameless dread which often accompanies a contemplated change. “With dear old Jack to take care of us? I’m ashamed of you! We’re going to have just lots of good times together. Try not to let Jack know that you mind. Remember, Prissy, it’s far harder on him to be obliged to give up all his own plans and hopes to take care of us, than it is for you and me to make some little sacrifices and pretend we like them.”

“Ye-es,” agreed Priscilla slowly, trying to measure up to what was expected of her.

“What’s the matter with Prissy?” demanded René, deserting his play and coming to stand in front of them. “Has she got a pain?”

“A kind of one,” replied Desiré gently, “but it’s getting better now; so go on with what you were doing, darling.”

The child returned to the corner of the room where he had been making a wagon from spools and a pasteboard box, while Priscilla murmured, “I’ll try not to fuss about things.”

“That’s a brave girl,” commended her sister. “Now, you’ve been in all day; so suppose you run down to see Felice for a little while. Maybe you’ll meet Jack on the way home, but don’t wait for him later than half past five.”

The little girl was almost out of sight when Desiré’s attention was diverted to the opposite direction by the sound of an automobile, apparently coming from Digby. Motor cars were still sufficiently new in Nova Scotia to excuse her 

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