"_You_ have _written_ a play!" Faith sat erect in her bed, all her tiredness, all her depression gone. "A real play! Oh, Audrey, do you mean it? How clever you are! Of course I'll go and take the children, to leave you here in peace to finish it. I don't care how shabby my clothes are!" Audrey winced. She would have liked--or, rather, it would have been pleasant--if Faith--and all--could just have realised her self-sacrifice-- how much it cost her to stand aside, and give up so great a pleasure. "Oh, I could----" she began, but, to her lasting joy, recovered herself in a moment, and never finished her sentence. "Audrey, will you let me read it, some day?" Faith's eyes were full of appeal. Audrey coloured. "Some day, perhaps," she said shyly. "Now I must go to bed." "Thank you," said Faith simply. "Oh, Audrey, I _am_ so happy!" She turned her pale face to the window, her eyes to the stars in the blue-black sky. "I am so happy that I feel I must get out and say my prayers again. A few minutes ago everything seemed black and dreary, but now----" "I will say mine too," said Audrey gently, "before I go." And the two sisters knelt down side by side in the darkness, and said their prayers again together, 'because they were so happy,' with the happiness which comes of giving up something for one another. The next morning Audrey got up early, and, going to the box-room, dragged out from their coverings her pretty green box and portmanteau. Then she went back to her room, and from her cupboards and drawers she collected a pair of house-shoes and a pair of boots, gloves, stockings, a soft grey cashmere dress that she had a little grown out of, and a Leghorn hat, which, she knew, had long filled Faith's heart with envy. All these she popped into the trunk. "There is something towards going away," she said, as she dragged the boxes into Faith's bedroom; "the dress is as good as new, but I have grown so, and--and I will lend you my writing-case, and a nice hairbrush." And before Faith had recovered herself sufficiently to speak, Audrey had darted away again and locked herself in her own room. The sacrifice had cost her more than anyone would ever know. The thought of the lost holiday, and such a holiday, was hard to bear, and a great longing for the sea was tugging at her heart-strings until the pain of it was almost unendurable. CHAPTER XIV. Audrey finished her clean copy of her play and posted it on the very day the family departed for Ilfracombe. But she did not tell Faith so. Faith must still believe that Audrey wanted nothing so much as a peaceful time at home for her work. "And now I shall have to wait three whole weeks before I hear anything," she thought dolefully, as she hurried home from the post office and into the house by way of the back door, before any of the others were down.