The restful stillness after the noisy day was good, and her eyes closed. For some time she lay back in her chair, and presently the old habit of her childhood asserted itself and, opening her eyes, she nodded as if to some one and began to talk softly. "Eight months and two weeks you've been back here, Mary Cary, and everybody certainly has been good to you--that is, almost everybody-- and you are just as happy as a person has a right to be. You always have known, or Martha has, that nobody can have everything just as they want it, and people will be pecky sometimes, and there will come down days as well as up ones. But you have so much to be thankful for that you'd be a selfish, silly creature, a weak and wicked creature, if you let anything, /anything/, make you the least bit tired or-- lonely, or make you wish for--for what you've got no business wishing for. Martha certainly is ashamed of you, Mary. You always did have a horrid habit of asking what's the use of doing this or doing that, and it's pure selfishness and laziness that asks questions of that sort. You might have married money and lived in a big city and given parties to people who didn't want to come, but had to just to let the others know they were invited; and you might have had automobiles and Paris clothes, but you watched that and didn't like it." In the darkness she shook her head. "You certainly didn't. You tried it when visiting you rich friends, and then your inquiring nature did have some sense, because it kept on asking inside what it was all for. Nobody seemed to want to go where they went, or to enjoy what they did, and yet they were bored to death at home. The men talked money and the women talked clothes, and everybody seemed to be trying to make a noise so as not to hear something they're bound to hear, and to turn their backs on something that's got to be faced; and you kept looking for the pudding and could only find the meringue, and you don't like meringue much even if it is pretty to see. And then you had the chance to come here. That is, you made up your mind you might help a little here, not being needed specially anywhere else; and then this wonderful offer came. Not one person in forty thousand ever was situated just as you've been, or had what you have to do with. I wonder why more rich people wouldn't rather give their money away while living and get pleasure out of it, than keep it until they're dead for somebody else to fuss over. I guess they hate to give it up until the last minute. It hurts some people to part with what they don't want, much less with what they don't want any one else to have. And I've been so glad to be here. People think it's funny my living alone, and Miss Gibbie living in her big house alone. But if we want out dining-room chairs on top the table instead of around it, we like to feel we can have them that way, and nobody to say we can't. As Mrs. McDougal says, 'we're individuals,' and 'it isn't every