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“You ain’t gettin’ discouraged, Abbie, be you?” she continued in a calmer tone. “Don’t get discouraged, child. I got discouraged when I was younger than you, and I ain’t never been happy since. You never knew why, and I ain’t goin’ to tell you now, but it’s been black night all these years–all ‘cept you. You’ve been the only thing made me live. If you get discouraged, child, I can’t stand it. Say you ain’t, Abbie–let me hear you say it–please Abbie!”

The girl rose from her chair and stood looking down at her mother. The sudden outburst, so unusual in one so self-restrained, the unmistakable suffering in the tones of her voice, thrilled and alarmed her. Her first impulse was to throw her arms about her mother’s neck and weep with her. This had been her usual custom when the load seemed too heavy for her mother to bear. Then the more practical side of her nature asserted itself. It was strength, not sympathy, she wanted. Slipping her hand under her mother’s arm, she raised her to her feet, and in a firm, decided voice, quite as a hospital nurse would speak to a restless patient, she said:

“You’d better not sit up any longer, Mother dear. Come, I’ll help put you to bed.”

There was no resistance. Whatever suddenly aroused memory had stirred the outburst, the paroxysm was over now.

“Well, maybe I am tired, child,” was all she said, and the two left the room.

“Poor, dear old Mother! Poor, tired old Mother!” the girl remarked to herself when she had resumed her place by the dying fire. “Wonder if I’ll get that way when I’m as old as she is!”

Then the hopelessness of the struggle she was making rose before her. How much longer would this go on? Up at six o’clock; a cup of coffee and a piece of bread; then the monotonous sorting of letters and papers–the ceaseless answering of stupid questions; then half an hour for dinner; then the routine again till train time, and home to the mother and the two chairs by the fire, only to begin the dreary tread-mil! again the next morning. And with this the daily growing older–older; her face thinner and more pinched, the shoulders sharp; her hair gray, head bent, just as her poor mother’s was, and, with all that, hardly money enough to buy herself a pair of shoes–never enough to give her dear mother the slightest luxury.

Discouraged! Hadn’t she reason to be?

The next morning Hiram walked into the post-office and called to Abbie, through the square window, to open the door. Once inside he loosened his fur driving-coat, took out a long, black wallet, picked out a thin slip of paper and laid it on Abbie’s desk.

“I have been thinking over what I told you yesterday. There’s a check drawn to your order for two hundred dollars. All you got to do is to put your name on the back of it and it’s money. It’s good–never knew one that warn’t.”

The girl started back.

“I didn’t ask you for it. I don’t–“

“I know you didn’t, and when you did it would be too late maybe–got to catch things sometimes when they’re flying past. I don’t know whether it’s those town lots they’re booming over to Haddam’s Corners, and I don’t care, but if that ain’t enough there’s more where that came from. Good-day!” and he slammed the glass door behind him. Abbie picked up the thin slip of paper and studied every line on its face, from the red number in the upper corner to “Hiram Taylor” in a bold, round hand. Then her eyes lighted on “Abijah Todd or order.”

Yes, it was hers–all of it. Not to spend, but to make money out of. Then her mother’s words of warning rang clear: “Worse than a ghost, my child!” Should she–could she take it? She turned to lay it in a drawer until she could hand it back to him and her eyes fell upon the poster framed in by the square of her window. She stopped and shut the drawer. Was she never to have her chance? Would the treadmill never end? Would the dear mother’s head never be lifted? Folding the check carefully, she loosened the top button of her dress and pushed it inside. There it burned like a hot coal.