“M’m!” said the son, watching Cornelia escape from a choking embrace from her younger brother and sister. “I should think that might be interesting,” and he walked quite around a group of chattering people greeting some friends in order that he might watch her the longer. But when Cornelia at last straightened her hat, and looked furtively about her, the mother and son had passed out of sight, and she drew a deep sigh of thanksgiving and followed her father and the children downstairs to the trolley. They seemed delightful people, and under other circumstances she might have heartily enjoyed their company; but if she had hard things to face she didn’t want an audience while she faced them. Her father might be shabby and old; but he was her father, and she wasn’t going to have him laughed at by anybody, even if he didn’t always see things as she thought he ought to see them. CHAPTER II It was a long ride, and the trolley was chilly. Cornelia tried to keep from shivering and smile at everything Louise and Harry told her, but somehow things had got on her nerves. She had broken out into a perspiration with all the excitement at the station, and now felt cold and miserable. Her eyeballs ached with the frequent tears that had slipped their salt way that afternoon; and her head was heavy, and heavier her heart. Across the way sat her father, looking grayer and more worn in the garish light of the trolley. His hair straggled and needed cutting, and his cheeks were quite hollow. He gave a hollow cough now and then, and his eyes looked like haunted spirits; but he smiled contentedly across to her whenever he caught her glance. She knew he meant that she should feel how glad he was to get her back. She began to feel very mean in her heart that she could not echo his gladness. She knew she ought to, but somehow visions of what she had left behind, probably forever, got between her and her duty, and pulled down the corners of her mouth in a disheartening droop that made her smiles a formal thing, though she tried, she really did try, to be what this worn old father evidently expected her to be, a model daughter, glad to get home and sacrifice everything in life for them all. These thoughts made her responses to the children only half-hearted. Harry was trying to tell her how the old dog had died and they had only the little pup left, but it was so game it could beat any cat on the street in a fight already, and almost any dog.