“My dear!” And then her own tears were falling, and she held the weeping girl close. “But you are cold! So cold you are trembling! Can’t we go into another room where it is warm and let me tell you how you have misunderstood me? I won’t stay if you don’t want me, but I can’t bear to have you misunderstand me. Come!”

Then the girl lifted her face and spoke fiercely again.

“Come?” she said. “Where shall we come? Don’t you know there hasn’t been a teaspoonful of coal in this house for two days and that we’ve burned up all the chairs that aren’t sold to try and keep from freezing—except this one that has to be sold to get some medicine for Mother? Don’t you know Father hasn’t had any work for nine months, and Mother is sick upstairs in bed with all the blankets we own piled around her and a hot-water bag at her feet? I borrowed the hot water from a house in the next block, and it won’t stay hot long, I had to bring it so far. She’s getting pneumonia, I’m afraid, and I had to lose my job to stay home and take care of her. Don’t you know that Dad is sick himself, but he had to go out and beg the landlord to let us stay a few days more till Mother is better? And I guess Ted has lost his newspaper route, and I’ve had to take the children to the neighborhood day care to keep them warm and fed?

“If you stay here with us, you’ll have to pawn that fur coat to get enough to eat! You’d better go back to your fine friends and get a job or something. We haven’t anything in the house to eat but two slices of stale bread I saved to make toast for Mother. She’d likely give them to you if she knew, for she’s cried over you night after night lately. Dad has been eating at the mission for two weeks to save what we had for the rest of us. We pawned everything we had for a pittance to live on. We just finished Mother’s silver wedding spoons, and there isn’t anything left but your picture frame and Mother’s wedding ring, and I can’t bear to go and take that off of her. It would break her heart!”

Suddenly the sister’s head went down again and more silent sobs shook her. It was terrible to look upon. Marjorie felt it was the most awful sight she had ever seen. She stood there appalled as the bald truths were thrown at her like missiles. And that was her sister sitting there shaking with cold and misery! And she was standing here done up in costly furs, never having known what it was to be cold or hungry or frightened like that! How she despised herself!

Suddenly she stood back and unbuttoned her coat, slid out of it, and wrapped it warmly around her sister.

“There! There! You precious sister!” she said softly, laying her lips on the other girl’s cheek.

But her sister struggled up fiercely, her pride blazing in her eyes, her arms flinging off the coat. “No!” she said. “No, I won’t wear your coat even for a minute.”

But Marjorie caught it together about her again and held it there.

“Look here!” she said with authority. “Stop acting this way! I’m your sister, and I’ve come to help you! You can’t fling me off this way! And we haven’t time to fight! We’ve got to get busy. What’s the first thing to do? Make a fire! Where can I find a man to send for coal? Where is your telephone?”

“Telephone!” laughed the sister hysterically. “We haven’t had a telephone in years!”

Marjorie gave her a startled look. “Well,” she said suddenly, “we must get a fire going before that hot-water bag gets cold. Mother has got to be thought of first. Where can I find a man to make a fire?”

“A man!” said the other girl. “A man to make a fire!” And she suddenly gave that wild, hysterical laugh again. “I could make a fire if I had anything to make it with. I tell you, there isn’t even a newspaper left.”

“Well, where do we get coal? I’ll go out and get some,” said Marjorie meekly.

“You can’t,” said her sister sullenly. “They won’t trust us till the bill is paid, and we’ve nothing to pay it with.” Her eyes were smoldering like slow fires, and her face was filled with shame as she confessed this, but Marjorie’s eyes lit with joy.

“Oh, but I have!” she cried eagerly, and put her hand into her purse, pulling out a nice fat roll of bills and slipping them into her sister’s hand.

“There,” she said. “Go quick and pay the bill and get the coal!”

The other girl looked down at her hand, saw the large denomination of the bills she was holding, and looked up in wonder. Then her face changed, and an alert look came, pride stole slowly up, and the faint color that had come into her cheeks faded, leaving her ghastly white again.

“We couldn’t take it!” she said fiercely.