I stood there by the gate just glowering as she went off.  I knew she thought I was going to perdition.  I was sick of “the engagement.”  What business was it of Peter’s and mine, anyhow?  It had nothing to do with us, really.  Then I thought of the time Peter and I quarrelled, and how dear Lyman Wilde was about it, and how he brought Peter back to me—­just to say the name of Lyman Wilde always makes me feel better.  I adore him, and always shall, and Peter knows it.  If I could only go back to the Settlement and hear him say, “Little girl,” in that coaxing voice of his!  He is one of those men who are always working so hard for other people that you forget he hasn’t anything for himself.

Thinking of him made me quite chipper again, and I went in and got his picture and stuck it up in the mantel-piece and put flowers in front of it.  When Peter came in I told him about everything, and of course he refused to write to Harry Goward, as I knew he would.  He said it was all rot, anyway, and that Harry was a nice boy, but not worth making such a fuss over.  He didn’t know that he was particularly stuck on Peggy’s marrying Harry Goward, anyway—­but there was no use in any one’s interfering.  Peggy was the person to write.  Finally he said he’d telephone to Harry the next day to come out and stay at our house over Sunday, and then he and Peggy could have a chance to settle it.

But Peter didn’t telephone.  He was late at the Works the next day—­though not nearly so late as he often is; but Mr. Talbert has a perfect fad about every one’s getting there on time; it’s one of the things there’s always been a tug about between him and Peter.  I should think he’d have realized long ago that Peter never will be on time, and just make up his mind to it, but he won’t.  Well, Peter came back again to the house a little after nine, perfectly white; he said he’d never enter the factory again. . . .

His father was in a towering rage when Peter went in; he spoke to Peter so that every one could hear him, and then—­Oh, it was a dreadful time!...

Alice told me afterward that Maria had found her father in the garden before breakfast.  She insinuated, in her way, all kinds of dreadful things about Harry Goward and Aunt Elizabeth, and there was a scene at the breakfast-table—­and Peggy was taken so ill that they had to send for Dr. Denbigh.  I don’t know what will happen when Aunt Elizabeth comes home.

V. THE SCHOOL-GIRL

by Elizabeth Jordan

Except for Billy, who is a boy and does not count, I am the youngest person in our family; and when I tell you that there are eleven of us—­well, you can dimly imagine the kind of a time I have.  Two or three days ago I heard Grandma Evarts say something to the minister about “the down-trodden and oppressed of foreign lands,” and after he had gone I asked her what they were.  For a wonder,