“Of course you have.  It’s what you ought to do, but I certainly give you credit for doing it.  Only I don’t think you’ve fully appreciated Sally’s part.  She’s worked harder than any of you.”

“Has she told you so?” Max was looking straight in front of him, and his eyes were angry.

“Never!  You know she hasn’t.  She’s not that kind of girl.  But I’m another girl, and I can see for myself.  Sally’s worked hard to make that apartment seem like home.  No matter how blue she felt herself, she’s never acted blue before you—­now has she?”

“I can’t say that she has.  She’s a light-hearted girl—­always was, and—­”

“Don’t you think it.  Sally’s been putting on a brave face and letting everybody suppose she’s cheerful.  She’s kept you all up when she was bluer than you are now.”

Max stopped short, stood still in the cart-path and looked Josephine in the eye.  She stopped also, and faced him coolly.

“Will you tell me how you know all this?” he inquired, fiercely.

“I’ve put two and two together, and found they make four,” replied Josephine.  “See here, Max “—­she spoke more gently, but quite as decidedly as before—­“you mustn’t think I’m trying to be disagreeable, now, of all times.  Of course I know you boys all love Sally as devotedly as brothers can, and do a great deal to show it.  But when it comes to sparing her anxiety and letting her have her way about things she has set her heart on, I don’t think you’re always quite as considerate as you might be.  I didn’t dream of saying all this to-day.  But when you began to talk about cutting down that pine grove, though you knew what a fancy Sally took to it, it came over me that you would be just as likely as anything to do it right now, while Sally is sick—­and I just couldn’t help speaking out.”

The two walked on in silence for some distance.  Then Max spoke, gloomily: 

“It’s all right enough to consider sentiment, and I know you well enough to understand what you mean by pitching into me this way.  But the craze Sally’s been in over this old place seems to me a thing out of all reason.  What are we, a family of bank clerks and office boys, to shoulder a proposition like this?  We can’t think of moving out here and living in that barracks, and trying to make a living off the soil.  Neither can we put a tenant on here, and fit him out with farm tools, and take the responsibility and the risk of his running the place.  He’d undoubtedly run us into the ground the first year.  I’ve thought it over and thought it over, and the only course seems to me to be to find a buyer for the place.  Money isn’t easy just now, and I’ve no doubt we’d have a hard time to get a decent price.  Meanwhile it seems to me only common sense to get what income we can out of it.  If I could sell that big pine grove, and cut off what timber is ready for the axe up here, it would bring us something quite substantial.”

Now this certainly was a presentation of the case which called for a considerate listening.  But, quite as if she had not heard a word of his argument, Josephine cried out: