“Father, I am as sick as can be to-night.”

“Go thy ways then.  Mother and I are both poorly too.  Good-night, girls, both.”  And he turned away with an air of hopeless depression, that was far more pitiful than the loudest complaining.

The sisters went away together, silent, and feeling quite “out” with each other.  But Sophia really had a nervous attack, and was shivery and sick with it.  By the lighted candle in her hand, Charlotte saw that her very lips were white, and that heavy tears were silently rolling down her wan cheeks.  They washed all of Charlotte’s anger away; she forgot her resolution not to enter her sister’s room again, and at its door she said, “Let me stay with you till you can sleep, Sophia; or I will go, and ask Ann to make you a cup of strong coffee.  You are suffering very much.”

“Yes, I am suffering; and father knows how I do suffer with these headaches, and that any annoyance brings them on; and yet, if Harry cries out at Edinburgh, every one in Seat-Sandal must be put out of their own way to help him.  And I do think it is a shame that our little fortunes are to be crumbled as a kind of spice into his big fortune.  If Harry does not know the value of money I do.”

“I will pay you back every pound.  I really do not care a bit about money.  I have all the dress I want.  You buy books and music, I do not.  I have no use for my money except to make happiness with it; and, after all, that is the best interest I can possibly get.”

“Very well.  Then, you can pay Harry’s debts if it gives you pleasure.  I suppose I am a little peculiar on this subject.  Last Sunday, when the rector was preaching about the prodigal son, I could not help thinking that the sympathy for the bad young man was too much.  I know, if I had been the elder brother, I should have felt precisely as he did.  I don’t think he ought to be blamed.  And it would certainly have been more just and proper for the father to have given the feast and the gifts to the son who never at any time transgressed his commandments.  You see, Charlotte, that parable is going on all over the world ever since; going on right here in Seat-Sandal; and I am on the elder brother’s side.  Harry has given me a headache to-night; and I dare say he is enjoying himself precisely as the Jerusalem prodigal did before the swine husks, when it was the riotous living.”

“Have a cup of coffee, Sophy.  I’ll go down for it.  You are just as trembly and excited as you can be.”

“Very well; thank you, Charlotte.  You always have such a bright, kind face.  I am afraid I do not deserve such a good sister.”

“Yes, you do deserve all I can help or pleasure you in.”  And then, when the coffee had been taken, and Sophia lay restless and wide-eyed upon her bed, Charlotte proposed to read to her from any book she desired; an offer involving no small degree of self-denial, for Sophia’s books were very rarely interesting, or even intelligible, to her sister.  But she lifted the nearest two, Barret’s “Maga,” and “The Veiled Prophet,” and rather dismally asked which it was to be?