“You may as well know first as last. I have had a letter from my brother. His wife is dead, leaving a daughter about twelve years old, and Al asks me to go out and take charge of things, says he is in poor health, has enough means to assure me a comfortable home, sentimentalizes over our childhood days—a happy childhood I had, didn’t I? After all these years pretends he has just awakened to the fact that he might have been a less indifferent brother. Now when he needs me he begins to see the light; just like him.” “But you aren’t going, are you?” Ellen knelt down and took one of her cousin’s hands, fondling it as she spoke. “Oh, Ellen, I don’t know. I said I wouldn’t, but perhaps it’s my duty, and I don’t believe I ever was one to shirk. It’s a hard question to decide, a hard question.” “Oh, Cousin Rindy, please don’t go. Just as things are getting easier for us it would be too bad. What with my little windfall and what will be realized from the sale of my father’s pictures we shall not have to pinch and screw as we have done. I have been rejoicing that I could do something toward lifting your burdens, and now——” “Nonsense! as if you hadn’t lifted my burdens times without number. I’m not one to palaver, as you know, but I tell you, Ellen, that you have been the greatest comfort to me. Of course we’ve had our spats; and I’ve been as much to blame in them as you, but take it by and large I don’t believe two persons could live together more harmoniously than we have done. How do I know what that child of Al’s is like? Spoiled, probably, and hard to manage. With you I’ve had it all my own way, with no one to interfere if I wanted to shake you or box your ears.” “Oh, Cousin Rindy, you never did such things,” Ellen expostulated. “Did I say I had? I only said I might have wanted to, which no doubt I did sometimes. I repeat, there was no one to interfere, and in Al’s home I should have to answer to him. Well, I’ll have to think it over. It isn’t to be decided ‘hot off the bat,’ as my boys used to say.” “But what would become of me if you deserted me?” asked Ellen dolorously. “There, Ellen, that’s just it. It’s been a question with me for some time whether or not I was doing right to keep you here. You love that artist life; you have good friends in the city. What do you say to trying it out for a year while I try it out in Seattle? Then, if we make up our minds that we don’t like it, we can come back here and settle down for good and all. We’ll think it over before I say yea or nay to this proposition.” So the matter was left for the present, and Ellen went about her affairs as usual. The tears would fill her eyes as she thought of putting the continent between herself and her cousin, yet when the picture of city life arose before her it held its charm.