It was so new for Jennie to care what became of her. Jennie had manifested very little interest in her during the years she had been living with them. What had gotten into Jennie?

When they came to clean the den, Jennie insisted upon doing it herself, saying she thought it would be too hard for Marion yet awhile; it would remind her of her father too much. Marion tried to protest, but when she got up the next morning she found that Jennie had arisen before her and finished cleaning the room entirely, so that there was nothing left for Marion to do in there. She stood for a moment looking around the bare room with its book-lined walls, its desk and worn old chair, and the little upholstered chair where she used to sit by her father’s side and study her lessons in the dear old days when he was well and she was still in school. Then she dropped into the desk chair with her head down on the desk and cried for a minute.

A wish came into her heart that she might have her house to herself for a little while. Just a little while. Of course it was nice of Jennie to be willing to come there and do the work all these years while there had been sickness. Of course Jennie had given up things to come. She had come a long way from her own father and mother, who lived up in Vermont, and she had not liked the city very well. But oh, if she just wouldn’t take things into her own hands quite so much and try to make her sister do everything she thought she ought. If she only hadn’t come into this sacred room and done the cleaning! It seemed to Marion that the spirit of the room had been hurt by such unsympathetic touches as Jennie would have given.

But that was silly of course! So Marion raised her head and wiped her eyes and summoned a smile to go out and help Nannie wash the breakfast dishes. But somehow day after day the strange, hurt feeling grew in her heart that all the precious things of her soul life were being desecrated by Jennie. Yet Jennie was doing it out of kindness to her. If only there were some way to let Jennie know without hurting her feelings. Marion was gentle and shy and couldn’t bear to hurt people’s feelings.

Marion went to church the next Sunday. She had always loved to go to church, but it had been so long since she had been able to leave her father and go that it seemed strange now to her to be sitting alone in the old seat where she and father had sat.

She had dreaded this and had even ventured to suggest to Tom that perhaps he would go with her. Jennie had declined most decidedly. She couldn’t leave the baby. But Tom said he had to see a man who had some property for sale, and he wanted to find out about it. So she had to come alone.

But it was good to be there again, after all, in spite of loneliness, and she had a feeling that her father would be pleased she had gone.

The minister came down and spoke to her kindly. He asked if she would come back to her old Sunday school class again. One of the ladies came over and asked her if she would come out to the Mite Society social and help wait on the folks; they had so much trouble getting girls to come and be waitresses.

Marion agreed to come, although she shrank tremendously from it. But it was something she could do, of course, and she felt she ought not to refuse. Jennie was most enthusiastic about it and offered to go with her, but when the evening came Jennie had a cold, and so she had to go alone.

As she entered the big Sunday school room where the social was to be held, she had an instant of hesitation. It seemed to her she could not go through a long evening all alone with strangers. She had always been a shy girl, and her five years of service caring for Mother and then Father had made her still more so. She was at home among books, not humans. If her books could have come alive and been present at that gathering, how gladly would she have walked in and conversed with their characters, one by one, thrilled by the thought of meeting those she knew so well. But a lot of people frightened her.