gloves; I couldn't make shoes and gloves, though I confess I did try. Then, if any one broke a pane of glass, that took money; and there were a few other little things. But, with these exceptions, I have tried to do everything myself, and manage without spending. I have kept all the furniture in repair; I have painted and varnished and cleaned with my own hands; I learned to mend the crockery and even the tins. I have made almost everything that Garda and I have worn, of course; I braid the palmetto hats we both wear; I have dyed and patched and turned and darned--oh! you haven't a conception! Some of the table-cloths are nothing _but_ darns. I could put in myself the new panes of glass, after they were once bought. And, every month or two, I have had to mend the roof, to keep it from leaking; generally I did that at sunrise, but I have done it, too, on moonlight nights, late, when no one was likely to come. Then, every single day, I have had to begin all over again with Pablo and Raquel. Three times every week I have had to go out myself and stand over Pablo to see that he did as I wished about the orange-trees. Always the very same things; but we have been at it in this way for years! Every day of my life I have had to go out and see with my own eyes whether Raquel had wiped off the shelves; three hundred and sixty-five times each year, for seventeen years, she has pretended to forget it." She lay silent, as if reviewing it all. "Perhaps I have been over-thorough," she resumed. "But somehow I couldn't help it, thoroughness has always been my mania. It has taken me to great lengths--I see it now; it has made burdens where there needn't have been any. Still, I couldn't have helped it, Margaret; I really don't think I could. After sweeping, I always used to go down on my hands and knees and dust the carpets with a cloth. And I used to pick up every seed that Dick, my canary, had dropped. Dear little Dick, how I cried when he died!--he was the last northern thing I had left; yet, would you believe it? I pretended I didn't care for him, that I was tired of his singing. I pretended I preferred the mocking-birds. Mocking-birds!" repeated Melissa Whiting, with whispered but scathing contempt.