with determination, "but I will never live out of it myself, nor permit you to. We are five, six, while Julia is with us," she added hastily, "and six persons will surely have rainy days coming to them. What if I should die and leave you?"

"Don't, mother!" they cried in chorus, so passionately that Mrs. Carey changed the subject quickly. "How much a year does it make, Nancy?"

"Three hundred and sixty plus one hundred plus two hundred equals six hundred and sixty," read Nancy. 'And I call it a splendid big lump of money!"

"Oh, my dear," sighed her mother with a shake of the head, "if you knew the difficulty your father and I have had to take care of ourselves and of you on five and six times that sum! We may have been a little extravagant sometimes following him about, — he was always so anxious to have us with him, but that has been our only luxury."

"We saved enough out of exchanging the grand piano to pay all the expenses down here, and all our railway fares, and everything so far, in the way of boards and nails and Osh Popham's labor," recalled Gilbert.

"Yes, and we are still eating the grand piano

at the end of two months, but it's about gone, is n't it, Muddy?" Nancy asked.

"About gone, but it has been a great help, and our dear little old-fashioned square is just as much of a comfort. Of course there's the tapestry and the Van Twiller landscape Uncle gave me; they may yet be sold."

"Somebody 'll buy the tapestry, but the Van Twiller 'll go hard," and Gilbert winked at Nancy.

"A picture that looks just the same upside down as the right way about won't find many buyers," was Nancy's idea.

"Still it is a Van Twiller, and has a certain authentic value for all time!"

"The landscapes Van Twiller painted in the dark, or when he had his blinders on, can't be worth very much," insisted Gilbert. "You remember the Admiral thought it was partridges nesting in the underbrush at twilight, and then we found Joanna had cleaned the dining room and hung the thing upside down. When it was hung the other end up neither father nor the Admiral could tell what it was; they'd lost the partridges and could n't find anything else!"

"We shall get something for it because it is a Van Twiller," said Mrs. Carey hopefully; "and the tapestry is lovely. Now we have

been doing all our own work to save money enough to make the house beautiful; yet, as Cousin Ann says, it does not belong to us and may be taken away at any moment after the year is up. We have never even seen our landlord, though Mr. Harmon has written to him. Are we foolish? What do you think, Julia?”

XV

BELONGING TO BEULAH

THE Person without a Fault had been quietly working at her embroidery, raising her head now and then to look at some extraordinary Carey, when he or she made some unusually silly or fantastic remark.

"I'm not so old as Gilbert and Nancy, and I'm only a niece," she said modestly, "so I ought not to have an opinion. But I should get a maid-of-all-work at once, so that we should n't all be drudges as we are now; then I should not spend a single cent on the house, but just live here in hiding, as it were, till better times come and till we are old enough to go into society. You could scrimp and save for Nancy's coming out, and then for Kathleen's. Father would certainly be well long before then, and Kathleen and I could début together!"

"Who wants to 'début' together or any other way," sniffed Nancy scornfully. "I'm coming out right here in Beulah; indeed I'm not sure but I'm out already! Mr. Bill Harmon has asked me to come to the church sociable and Mr. Popham has invited me to the Red Men's

picnic at Greentown. Beulah's good for something better than a place to hide in! We'll have to save every penny at first, of course, but in three or four years Gilly and I ought to be earning something."

"The trouble is, I can't earn anything in college," objected Gilbert, "though I'd like to."

"That will be the only way a college course can come to you now, Gilbert," his mother said quietly. "You know nothing of the expenses involved. They would have taxed our resources to the utmost if father had lived, and we had had our more than five thousand a year! You and I together must think out your problem this summer."

Gilbert looked blank and walked to the window with his hands in his pockets.

"I should lose all my friends, and it's hard for a fellow to make his way in the world if he has nothing to recommend him but his graduation from some God-forsaken little hole like Beulah Academy."

Nancy looked as if she could scalp her brother when he alluded to her beloved village in these terms, but her mother's warning look stopped any comment.

Julia took up arms for her cousin. "We ought to go without everything for the sake of sending