fear,” answered [Pg 21]mother, her hands trembling slightly. “Would you care to see them?”

[Pg 21]

“I certainly should,” he cried, and they went away up-stairs together.

I know what it cost mother to let them go—the contents of those portfolios, or such of them as were marketable—the sketches, the studies, the ideas which had developed into finished pictures. They were a part of him, the most vital part of him she had left; but her duty was to her children, and she never hesitated. And one morning, nearly a month later, came a letter. The sketches had been sold at auction, they had awakened a very satisfactory interest, and the net result, after deducting the dealer’s commission, was the check for two thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars, which was enclosed.

It came at a good hour, as I learned long afterwards; at an hour when mother found herself quite at the end of her resources, and failure staring her in the face—at an hour when she was thinking that she must swallow her pride and appeal for help to Plumfield; hoist the white flag, as it were, and admit defeat.

As to grandaunt, we never heard from her nor of her. When she slammed our front door behind [Pg 22]her that morning, she passed from our lives completely. Mother wrote to her once, but received no answer, and would not write again; and gradually we children came to forget, almost, that she existed, or remembered her only as a kind of myth—a phantom which had crossed our path years before and then disappeared for ever. Yet I now know that she sometimes thought of us, and that, as the years went by, the anger she felt toward us passed away, and left, at worst, only a settled belief in our foolishness and incapacity. Perhaps we were foolish and incapable, but we were happy, too!

[Pg 22]

So eight years rolled around, and again we faced a crisis. For one must eat and be clothed, and even the sum we had got for father’s sketches would not last for ever. Both Dick and I were old enough now to be taken into the family council, and mother wisely thought it best to confide in us wholly, and we were very proud to be taken into her confidence. Briefly, our home was mortgaged to its full value, and would have to be sold, since there was no way of paying off the indebtedness, nor even of meeting the interest on it.

“We will move into a smaller house,” said mother. “We really don’t need so large a one as [Pg 23]this,” but her eyes filled 

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