A post-card came from Mrs. O'Connor requesting, in a peremptory language customary to such communications, that Mrs. Makebelieve would please call on her the following morning before eight o'clock. Mrs. Makebelieve groaned as she read it. It meant work and food and the repurchase of her household goods, and she knew that on the following morning she would not be able to get up. She lay a while thinking, and then called her daughter. "Deary," said she, "you will have to go to this place in the morning and try what you can do. Tell Mrs. O'Connor that I am sick, and that you are my daughter and will do the work, and try and do the best you can for a while." She caught her daughter's head down to her bosom and wept over her, for she saw in this work a beginning and an end, the end of the little daughter who could be petted and rocked and advised, the beginning of a womanhood which would grow up to and beyond her, which would collect and secrete emotions and aspirations and adventures not to be shared even by a mother, and she saw the failure which this work meant, the expanding of her daughter's life ripples to a bleak and miserable horizon where the clouds were soapsuds and floor cloths, and the beyond a blank resignation only made energetic by hunger. "Oh, my dear," said she, "I hate to think of you having to do such work, but it will only be for a while, a week, and then I will be well again. Only a little week, my love, my sweetheart, my heart's darling." XVII Early on the following morning Mary Makebelieve awakened with a start. She felt as if some one had called her, and lay for a few moments to see had her mother spoken. But her mother was still asleep. Her slumber was at all times almost as energetic as her wakening hours. She twisted constantly and moved her hands and spoke ramblingly. Odd interjections, such as "ah, well, no matter, certainly not, and indeed aye," shot from her lips like bullets, and at intervals a sarcastic sniff fretted or astonished her bedfellow into wakefulness. But now as she lay none of these strenuous ejaculations were audible. Sighs only, weighty and deep drawn and very tired, broke on her lips and lapsed sadly into the desolate room.