"No, no, child. Run along and have a good time while you can." Rhoda kissed her mother and the baby; and putting on her hat, she walked thoughtfully down the garden, jumped lightly over the rail fence, and took the path across the meadow which led "'cross-lots" to Aunt Hannah's little brown house on the edge of the mill-pond. Rhoda Bowers was an orphan, but she had never felt the want of a mother's care, as many children do. Till she was seven years old she had lived at the old ladies' "Home" in Milby—an excellent institution founded some thirty years ago by two wealthy old ladies "for the maintenance of twenty widows or single women of good repute who should have passed the age of sixty years, and also, should the funds prove sufficient, of no more than eight poor little girls." The property belonging to "The Home" had greatly increased in value; and as all the funds were properly employed, both the old ladies and the little girls were made very comfortable indeed. This institution had been Rhoda's home ever since she could remember, till one day Mr. and Mrs. Bowers of Boonville, attracted by her bright gray eyes and pretty curling black hair, had adopted her for their own. Rhoda had been rather homesick at first, but she soon became reconciled to the change, and had found her life as happy as that of most children. Mr. Bowers lived on a farm about half a mile from the little village of Boonville, and had besides an interest in one of the mills on the Outlet, as the little river was called. He could not be called rich, but neither was he poor. The farm was a good one, and the mill, taking one year with another, was fairly productive. Mr. Bowers owned a nice pair of horses, and his wife dressed well and might have kept a servant-girl if she had chosen. In short, as Aunt Hannah Weightman said, James and Martha were about as well off as anybody in the world, if they could only think so. But that was just the thing. They could not think so as long as Uncle Jacob Weightman counted his money by hundreds of thousands—as long as Mrs. Bowers's brother-in-law, Mr. Evans, owned one of the finest places in Hobarttown, and Mrs. Bowers's sister had three new dresses to her one, and could go to the springs and the seashore, and even to Europe, every summer of her life if she chose. Mrs. Bowers fancied that her sister Anne "felt above her," which was not true, and that Anne cared for nothing but the things of this world, which was not true, either; and when Mrs. Evans, who had lost all her own children but one little delicate boy, proposed that Rhoda should spend the winter with her and go to school, Mrs. Bowers refused her consent with some acrimony, saying to her husband afterward that she thought Anne had enough without trying to get Rhoda away from her. "She just wants Rhoda to wait on that boy of hers," said Mr. Bowers.