Ann heard Isabel's voice in gentle but earnest expostulation, as she reached Alice's room. Isabel paused when Ann entered, kissed her cheek, and resigned her rocking-chair to her. Alice was sobbing too violently to speak. She took her face from her handkerchief, bowed to Ann, and again buried it. Ann invited them to walk with her. Isabel cheerfully acceded to her proposal, and urged Alice to accompany them. "Don't urge me, Isabel," said Alice; "I am only fit for the solitude of my chamber. I could not add at all to your pleasure. My thoughts would be at my home, and I could not enjoy a walk in the least degree. But Isabel, I do not want you to leave me so. I know that you think me very foolish to indulge in these useless regrets, as you call them. You will understand me better if you just consider the situation of my mother's family. My mother a widow, my oldest brother at the West, my oldest sister settled in New York, my youngest brother and sister only with mother, and I a Lowell factory girl! And such I must be--for if I leave the mill, my brother cannot attend school all of the time; and his heart would almost break to take him from school. And how can I be happy in such a situation; I do not ask for riches; but I would be able to gather my friends all around me. Then I could be happy. Perhaps I am as happy now as you would be in my situation, Isabel." Isabel's eyes filled, but she answered in her own sweet, calm manner: "We will compare lots, my dear Alice. I have neither father, mother, sister, nor home in the world. Three years ago I had all of these, and every other blessing that one could ask. The death of my friends, the distressing circumstances attending them, the subsequent loss of our large property, and the critical state of my brother's health at present, are not slight afflictions, nor are they lightly felt." Isabel's emotions, as she paused to subdue them by a powerful mental effort, proved her assertion. Alice began to dry her tears, and to look as if ashamed of her weakness. "I, too, am a Lowell factory girl," pursued Isabel. "I, too, am laboring for the completion of a brother's education. If that brother were well, how gladly would I toil! But that disease is upon his vitals which laid father, mother, and sister in their graves, in one short year. I can see it in the unnatural and increasing brightness of his eye, and hear it in his hollow cough. He has entered upon his third collegiate year; and is too anxious to graduate next commencement, to heed my entreaties, or the warning of his physician." She again paused. Her whole frame shook with emotion; but not a tear mingled with Ann's, as they fell upon her hand.