That day the family at Port Dundas were pursuing their ordinary employments with a greater hush and stillness about them than usual. Martha and Rose sat together, sewing in the parlour. They were both very silent--in the exhaustion of hopelessness, afraid to speak to each other of the one great subject which absorbed their thoughts. Agnes had gone with her baby in her arms to the kitchen to speak to Mrs. Rodger, and was lingering there a little, willing to be delivered from herself; while Violet had carried out a little wondering pre-occupied heart into the midst of a juvenile assembly in front of the house, and was gradually awaking out of abstraction into vigorous play. The prospect was very cheerful from the window. Yonder little Maggie McGillivray, with unfailing industry, clipped and sang at her mother’s door under the full sunshine of noon; and here, upon the pavement, the little form of Violet, poised on one foot, pursued the marble “pitcher” through the chalked “beds” necessary for the game, while her playmates stood round watching lest she should infringe its rules, and Mrs. McGarvie’s tawny truculent Tiger winked in the sunshine as he sat complacently looking on. The very din of traffic in the busy street was cheering and life-like; but the two sisters, sat with their little muslin curtain drawn, sick at heart. At the window in the kitchen Miss Aggie Rodger stretched her considerable length upon the deal table, while the hapless idle Johnnie occupied his usual chair by the fireside, and Miss Jeanie in a dress a little, and only a little, better arranged than her sister, sat on the wooden stool near her, very prim and very busy. Miss Aggie had laid down her work, and from the table was making desperate lunges at the crowing baby. In a dingy printed gown, girded round her waist by an apron professedly white, but as dingy as the print, and with a broad black ribbon tyeing down her widow’s cap, Mrs. Rodger stood conversing with the lodger. “This is Thursday,” said Agnes, “by the end of next week, Mrs. Rodger, I shall be ready with the rent.” “Very weel, Mrs. Muir,” responded the widow, “what suits you will suit me. It’s a new thing to me, I assure you, to be needing to seek siller. When Archie was to the fore--and a guid man he was to me, and a guid father to the weans--I never ance thought of such a needcessity as this; but are maun submit to what’s imposed; and then there’s thae wearifu’ taxes, and gas, and water. I declare it’s enough to pit folk daft--nae suner ae body’s turned frae the door than anither chaps--it’s just an even down imposition.” “Look at the pet--Luick, see! eh! ye wee rogue, will ye break my side comb,” cried Miss Aggie, shaking the baby with furious affection, from which the young mother shrunk a little. “Dinna be sae wild, Aggie,” said her prim sister. “Ye’ll frighten the wean.” “Never you fash your head, Jean. Are ye there, ye wee pet? Eh, if he hasna pitten his finger through yin o’ the holes!”