“I know,” her father said apologetically. “That was mother, too! she wouldn’t have you troubled. She said it was just your examination time, and it would mean a great deal to you to get your marks; and it would only be a time of anxiety to you, and she was so sure she would come out all right. She was wonderfully brave, your mother was. And she hoped so much she’d be able to get up and around, and not have to bring you home till your course was over. We meant to manage it somehow; but you see we didn’t know how serious it was, and how she would have to go away and stay a long time till she was strong.” Cornelia’s eyes were filled with tears now. She had forgotten her own disappointments and the way she had been blaming her father, and was filled with remorse for the little mother who had suffered and thought of her to the last. She got up quickly, and went over to gather the bowed head of her father into her unaccustomed arms and try somehow to be daughterly. It was strange because she had been away so long and had got out of the way of little endearments, but she managed it so that the big man was comforted and smiled at her, and told her again and again how good it was to have her back, almost as good as having her mother. Then he stroked her hair, looked into her wise young eyes, and called her his little Nellie-girl, the way she could remember his doing before she went away to school. When Cornelia went upstairs at last with the kerosene-lamp held high above her head so that she would not stumble up the steep, winding staircase, she had almost forgotten herself and her ambitions, and was filled with a desire to comfort her father. She dropped into her place beside the sleeping sister with a martyr-like quiet, and failed to notice the discouraged droop of the little huddled figure, and the tear-stained cheek that was turned toward the dingy wall. The dreariness of the room and the close quarters had brought depression upon her spirits once more, and she lay a long time filled with self-pity, and wondering how in the world she was ever to endure it all. CHAPTER III In the dimness of the early morning Louise Copley awoke with a sigh to consciousness, and softly slid her hand down to the floor under the bed, where she had hidden the old alarm-clock. With a sense that her elder sister was still company she had not turned on the alarm as usual, and now with clock-like regularity and a sense of responsibility far beyond her years she had wakened at a quarter to six as promptly as if the whir of the alarm had sounded underneath her pillow.