"But I think it will come out all right, auntie, truly," she ended. "I shall get them again to-morrow morning. Mr. Blodgett said he'd telegraph to have the Crosspatch Conduc--I mean the _conductor_--bring them with him to-morrow. It isn't likely anybody would steal a school satchel of books!" The bright voice ran on, quite gay and untroubled again. But Aunt Hope put up her hand and felt about for the laughing lips, to hush them. It had grown dark in the room. "Glory, I am going to tell you a story," Aunt Hope said quietly. "You are to sit a little closer to me and listen like a good little girl. Don't speak, dear." "I won't, auntie." "There was another girl once," began Aunt Hope's gentle voice. "She had two things she loved especially--an Ambition and a Brother. She spelled them both with capitals, they were so dear to her. Sometimes she told herself she hardly knew which one she loved the better. But there came a time when she must choose between them, and then she knew. Of course it was the Brother. She put the Ambition away on a high shelf where she could not go to it too often and cry over it. 'Stay there awhile,' she said. 'Some day I shall come and take you down and live with you again. Just now I must take care of my Brother.' "For the girl and her Brother were all alone in the world, and she was the older. He was a little thing, and she was all the mother he had. For fifteen years she took care of him, and then one day she found time to take the Ambition down from the high shelf--she had not had time before. She took it down and clasped it in the old way to her breast. 'Oh, ho!' she laughed--she was so glad!--'Oh, _now_ I have time for you! You and I will never part again.' And she was as happy as a little child over a lost treasure. It did not seem to dismay her because she was not a girl any longer. Women could have Ambitions, she said. And what did she do but get out her study books and wipe off the dust of years! It lay on them discouragingly thick and white, but she laughed in its face. "That was because she did not know. Sometimes it is better not to know. Do you think it would have been kind to let her know on that first sweet day? At any rate she never lost that day. She had it with her always afterward--the one beautiful, long day she and her Ambition spent together again, after she took it down from the shelf. They spent it all among the dusted books. "The next day there was a terrible accident, and when it was over and this other girl, who had grown to a woman, was lying in a dark room that somehow seemed to be full of a dull pain, she heard her Brother and a doctor talking outside. She heard every word. Then she knew what was coming to her. She could tell what to expect. "Well, she put the Ambition back, away back in her heart, and it has been there ever since. She lets it come to the front sometimes--but only once in a very great while."