The family found out what it meant when they began to visit the little house in town. Rosa had found another guide than her own sweet will. She no longer idled the days away, but sat patiently upon her little stool and painted from morning till late in the afternoon, while Brent--the personification of vigilance--hovered about, pipe in mouth, seeing to the thousand and one things about the house, which, except for his superintendence, kept itself, and dividing the rest of his attention between Rosa's canvas and his own. "Do you know," said Caroline, indignantly, "that Rosa--our lazy little Rosa--has made fifteen hundred dollars the past year, while Brent has only made three hundred?" "That's what he married her for," said Minnie, with a rapid inspiration. "I wondered what impelled him. I thought it wasn't love." "My dear, he seems very fond of her," said Mrs. Jones, divided between a wish to cry and a wish to make the best of it. "He _is_ fond of her," declared Caroline, "and she's fond of him. But if ever a girl found a master she has. He makes her work as I never expected to see Rosa work. Not at housework, dear me, no! She is not to waste her precious strength on such things. She is to devote herself to art, which is to make _her_ reputation and _his_ living. That's all there is to it." "Perhaps it is not the worst thing that could have happened to her," mused Minnie. "There is a kind of nature that needs to be compelled to make the best of itself." "Don't you want some brute of an Englishman to compel you to make the best of yourself?" snapped Caroline. "No," answered Minnie, quietly. "What would do for Rosa would never suit me." "Well, I think we had better go in and take some peaches and straighten up that disorderly house," said the elder sister. They found Rosa sitting absorbed over a beautiful screen which was a piece of ordered work, to cost a hundred and fifty dollars, while Brent stood at the kitchen door, smoking placidly as he contemplated a tableful of unwashed dishes. "Come in, sisters both," he said, gaily. "But don't stop Rosa just now; she hates to be interrupted when she is at work." AN AWAKENING[7] "AND who is that tall young man in the store, who stood there as if nothing could induce him to take his hands from his pockets?" Miss Stretton's companion looked as if he were mystified by her scornful tone. "That's Albert Johnson," he answered in his matter-of-fact way. "He's only been back hyar about six months. A couple o' years ago he went down to Texas and made about five hundred dollars, and then, all to onct, he turned up hyar again. He's nephew to old Johnson, and stays in th' store, mostly." "Doing what?" asked Miss Stretton, crisply.