Don’t be a fool.”

He said it kindly in his elder-brother way; but Marion’s face grew whiter, and she stood looking at him as if she could not believe what he had said. Her great dark eyes made him uncomfortable. He turned from her and went to wind the clock.

“Come, hurry up, Jennie,” he said with a yawn. “Let’s get to sleep. I’m about played out. It’s been a hard day, and I must get up early in the morning to catch Matthews before he goes to the store.”

Marion dropped silently back into the kitchen and finished her dishes. Jennie came in presently and turned on the light with an energetic click, looking suspiciously at the silent figure wringing out the dishtowels; but Marion’s face was turned from her, and she could not see whether or not there were traces of tears upon it. Marion hung up the dishtowels on the little rack beside the range and went silently upstairs.

Jennie listened until she heard the door of Marion’s room close; then she went back to her husband.

“Do you think she’ll make trouble about selling this house?” she asked anxiously.

“Trouble? Pooh! She’ll not make trouble,” he said in his complacent voice that always soothed his wife. “She’ll have her little cry over giving it up, but she’ll be all right in the morning.”

“But doesn’t she own half of it?” queried the wife sharply. “Hasn’t she a right by law to object?”

“Yes, she owns half of it, but she’ll never object. Why, she’d give me her head if I told her she ought to,” said the husband, laughing.

“She might give you her head,” said Jennie with a toss of her own, “but she’s got a terrible will of her own sometimes, and I’ve an idea she’s got it on the brain to go to teachers’ school, yet.”

“Nonsense!” said her husband, ponderously. “She’s too old! Why, she’s almost twenty-three.”

“Well, you’ll see!”

“Well, you’ll see. I guess my sister has some sense! Come, let’s shut up shop.”

Marion locked her bedroom door and went straight to her white bed, kneeling beside it and burying her face in the pillow.

“O Father, Father,” she whispered, “what shall I do? How can I bear it?”

Long after the house was silent she knelt there trying to think. By and by she crept over to her back window, and, sitting in her willow chair, rested her cheek against the window frame. The spring air stole in and fanned her cheeks and blew the tendrils of damp hair away from her temples soothingly, like a tender hand.

The Warren home was a pleasant red-brick house with white marble trimmings and marble steps. It was in a nice, respectable neighborhood, with plain, well-to-do neighbors and neat backyards meeting on a cement-paved alleyway. In a few weeks now these backyards would be carpeted with well-kept turf and borders of pretty flowers. Her own crocuses and hyacinths and daffodils that her beloved father had taught her to care for were even now beginning to peep through the earth. Her window had always framed for her a pleasant world of sights and sounds that were comfortable and prosperous. She loved to watch and compare the growing things in the green backyards, or to enjoy their clean white covering in winter; and she knew every varying phase of cloud or clearness in the bit of sky overhead. She looked up now, a broken moon beamed kindly down between dark, tattered clouds.

Within, the room was a white haven of rest. The simple enamel bed with brass trimmings, the white bureau and washstand, the willow chair, the plain muslin curtains, and the gray rugs with pink borders had all been the gift of her loving father. They represented sacrifice and extra night-work after the wearisome day’s toil was completed; and some had been acquired under protest of the more practical mother, who felt that the money might have been displayed to better advantage in the parlor.

Marion loved her white room. It seemed an inner shrine to fortify her soul against the trials and disappointments of life. And the bit of window view of flying cloud and neat yards and brick rows was a part of it all. The whole was linked eternally with precious memories of her dear father. And her brother was planning to take them all away! It was appalling!

It was not that she did not appreciate pure air and green grass and unlimited sky. She, more than the rest of the family, had the artist eye to see the beauties of nature. But the change meant to her a giving up of her life ambitions, a cutting herself off from the great world of education. Ever since her childhood she had longed for a fine education and contact with the world of art and culture.