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“Six hundred! Why, if the stock goes to what they call par–and that’s where they all go, so Maria says–I’ll have–have–two thousand, less Mr. Taylor’s two hundred–I’ll have eighteen hundred dollars!” The little fellow in her bosom was rubbing away now with all his might. She could hear his heart beat against her own.

*****

It was nearly midnight when the two went to bed. Stick after stick had been thrown on the fire; the logs had flamed and crackled in sympathy with their own joyous feelings, and had then fallen into piled-up coals, each heap a castle of delight, rosy in the glow of freshly enkindled hopes.

And the song in her heart never ceased. Day by day a fresh note was added; everything she touched; everything she saw was transformed. The old tumble-down house with its propped-up furniture and makeshift carpets seemed to have become already the place she planned it to be. There would be vines over the door and a new summer kitchen at the back’; and there would be a porch where her mother could sit, flowers all about her–her dear mother, bent no longer, but fresh and rosy in her new clothes, smiling at her as she came up the garden path.

And what delight it was just to breathe the air! Never had her step been so light, or her daily walk to the dingy office–dingy no longer–so bracing. And the out-of-doors–the sky and drifting clouds; the low hills, bleak in the winter’s gloom–what changes had come over them? Was it the first blush of the coming spring that had softened their lines, or had her eyes been blind to all their beauty? Oh! Marvellous elixir that makes hopes certainty and gilds each cloud!

*****

One morning a man waiting for a letter from an absent son heard the telephone ring, and saw Abbie drop her letters and catch up the receiver:

“Yes, I’m Miss Todd.–Oh! Mr. Keep? Yes.–Yes–I’ve got it here.” Her face grew deathly white. “What! Selling at twelve!” The man feared she was about to fall. “I thought you told me… A big slump! Well, I don’t want to lose if… Yes, I’ll mail it right away… Reach you by the 9.10 to-morrow.”

“I hope you ain’t got any bad news, have you?” the man asked in a sympathetic voice.

“No,” she answered in a choking voice, as she handed him his letter; then she turned her back and took the certificate from her bosom.

“Selling at twelve,” she kept saying to herself; “perhaps at ten; perhaps at five. Would it go lower? Suppose it went down to nothing. What could she say to her mother? How would she pay Mr. Taylor?” Her breath came short; a dull sense of some impending calamity took possession of her. Everything seemed slipping from her grasp.

An hour passed–two. In the interim she had indorsed the certificate and had dropped it into the open mouth of the night-bag. Again the bell sounded.

“Yes,” she answered in a faint voice; her shoulder was against the wall now for support.

She was ready for the blow; all her life they had come this way.

“Sold your twenty at ten. Mail you check for $190 on receipt of certificate.”

Abbie clutched her bosom as if for relief, but there came no answering throb. The little devil was gone, and the lamp with him.

“And is it all over, Abbie?” asked her mother, as she drew her shawl closer about her head. One stick of wood must last them till bedtime now.

“Yes–all.” The girl lay crouched at her feet sobbing, her head in her mother’s lap.

“Can you pay Hiram?”

“I have paid him in full. I gave him Mr. Keep’s check and ten dollars of my pay–paid him this morning. He wouldn’t take any interest.”

“Oh, that’s good–that’s good, child!” she crooned.

There came a long pause, during which the two women sat motionless, the mother looking into the smouldering coals. She had but few tears left none for disappointments like these.

“And we have got to keep on as we have?”

“Yes.” The reply was barely audible.

The mother lifted her thin, worn hand, and laid it on Abbie’s head.

“Well, child,” she said slowly, “you can thank God for one thing. You had your dream; ain’t many even had that.”