In that busy household there was no time to sit alone and brood. A quiet walk now and then, and that half hour in Hatty's room, was all Bessie could conscientiously spare. If she stayed away for an hour, Christine complained of dullness, and her mother looked sadder on her return. Ella and Katie, too, made constant demands on her time and patience. Christine was very unlike Bessie in temperament. She was a pretty, bright girl, warm-hearted and high-spirited, but she did not possess Bessie's contented nature. Christine often found her quiet life irksome. She was inquisitive, restless, eager to see the world. She had insatiable curiosity; a love of change, her small girlish ambitions. She wanted to plume her wings a little--to try them in flights hither and thither. The gay world seemed to her ignorance a land flowing with milk and honey. She had yet to spell the meaning of the words illusion and vanity. Bessie was fond of Christine. She loved all her sisters dearly, but there was less sympathy between them than there had been between herself and Hatty. Hatty, in spite of her morbid humors and difficult tendencies, had a refined and cultured mind; her chief source of fretfulness was that she loved the best, and failed to reach it. The very loftiness of her standard produced despondency akin to despair. Hatty's faith was pure, but feeble. She hated everything false and mean. She despised the conventionalities of life, while Bessie laughed at them. She and Bessie had their ideals, their simple secrets, their crude girlish notions, that were nevertheless very true and sweet. Bessie could make allowances for Hatty's sharp speeches as she watched her daily struggles with her faulty temper. She could rejoice in Hatty's victories all the more that she had borne so patiently with her failures, and there was no abiding sting in her grief now, no remorseful feelings for duties undone and opportunities wasted; but with Christine things were different. One Sunday afternoon when Bessie was stealing away for a quiet half hour in Hatty's room, she was surprised to find Christine following her. "May I come in too, Bessie?" she said very humbly, and her eyes were full of tears; "I do so want a little comfort, and I can't talk to mother. I am making myself miserable about Hatty." "About our dear Hatty! Oh, Chrissy, what can you mean?" asked Bessie reproachfully. "We can talk here, and perhaps our poor darling may be listening to us. I do love this room; it seems to breathe of Hatty somehow. There, I will open the window. How sweet the air is? and look, how red the leaves are, though it is only the end of September!" And then she added, softly: "Hatty has been six weeks in her new home."