“For my part,” said Elbert, “I see nothing so much amiss at the Wainwrights.  They’re a jolly set, and go when you will, you find them having good times.  Of course they are in straitened circumstances.”

“And Grace has been accustomed to lavish expenditure,” said Mildred.

“If she had remained in Paris, with her Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gertrude she would have escaped a good deal of hardship,” said Lawrence.

“Oh,” mamma broke in, impatiently, “how short-sighted you young people are!  You look at everything from your own point of view.  It is not of Grace I am thinking so much.  I am considering her mother and the girls and her poor, worn-out father.  I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking of the Wainwrights.  Mildred, you might send over a nut-cake and some soft custard and a glass of jelly, when it stops raining, and the last number of the “Christian Herald” and of “Harper’s Monthly” might be slipped into the basket, too—­that is, if you have all done with it.  Papa and I have finished reading the serial and we will not want it again.  There’s so much to read in this house.”

“I’ll attend to it, mamma,” said Mildred.  “Now what can I do to help you before I go to my French lesson.”

“Nothing, you sweetest of dears,” said mother, tenderly.  Mildred was her great favorite, and nobody was jealous, for we all adored our tall, fair sister.

So we scattered to our different occupations and did not meet again till luncheon was announced.

Does somebody ask which of the minister’s eight children is telling this story?  If you must know, I am Frances, and what I did not myself see was all told to me at the time it happened and put down in my journal.

CHAPTER II.

AT WISHING-BRAE.

Grace Wainwright, a slender girl, in a trim tailor-made gown, stepped off the train at Highland Station.  She was pretty and distinguished looking.  Nobody would have passed her without observing that.  Her four trunks and a hat-box had been swung down to the platform by the baggage-master, and the few passengers who, so late in the fall, stopped at this little out-of-the-way station in the hills had all tramped homeward through the rain, or been picked up by waiting conveyances.  There was no one to meet Grace, and it made her feel homesick and lonely.  As she stood alone on the rough unpainted boardwalk in front of the passenger-room a sense of desolation crept into the very marrow of her bones.  She couldn’t understand it, this indifference on the part of her family.  The ticket agent came out and was about to lock the door.  He was going home to his mid-day dinner.

“I am Grace Wainwright,” she said, appealing to him.  “Do you not suppose some one is coming to meet me?”