"If she can't wear her own, she couldn't wear mine--" said Miss Nettie, unwilling to furnish positive evidence that her foot was larger than her cousin's. Her mother insisted however, and the boots were brought. They went on easily enough. "But these would never do to walk in," objected Rotha. "My feet feel as if each one had a whole barn to itself. Look, aunt Serena. And I could not go to the parlour in them." "I don't see but you'll have to, if you can't get your own on. You'll have worse things than that to do before you die. I wouldn't be a baby, and cry about it." For Rotha's lips were trembling and her eyes were suddenly full. Her neat feet transformed into untidy, shovelling things like these! and her quick, clean gait to be exchanged for a boggling and clumping along as if her feet were in loose boxes. It was a token how earnest and true was Rotha's beginning obedience of service, that she stooped down and laced the boots up, without saying another word, though tears of mortification fell on the carpet. She was saying to herself, "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." She rose up and made her adieux, as briefly as she could. "Are you not going to thank me?" said Mrs. Busby. A dangerous flash came from Rotha's eyes. "For what, aunt Serena?" "For the trouble I have taken for you, not to speak of the expense." Rotha was silent, biting in her words, as it were. "Why don't you speak? You can at least be civil." "I don't know if I can," said Rotha. "It is difficult. I think my best way of being civil is to hold my tongue. I must go--Good bye, ma'am!--" and she staid for no more, but ran out and down the stairs. She paused as she passed the open parlour door, paused on the stairs, and then went on and took the trouble to go a few steps back through the hall to get the interior view more perfectly. The grate was heaped full of coals in a state of vivid glow, the red warm reflections came from, crimson carpet and polished rosewood and gilding of curtain ornaments. Antoinette's piano gave back the shimmer, and the thick rug before the hearth looked like a nest of comfort. So did the whole room. A feeling of the security and blessedness of a home came over Rotha. This was home to Antoinette. It was not home to herself, nor was any other place in all the earth. Not Mrs. Mowbray's kind house; it was kind, but it was not _home;_ and a keen wish crept into the girl's heart. To have a home somewhere! Would the time ever be? Must she perhaps, as her aunt foretold, be a houseless wanderer, teaching in other people's homes, and having none? Rotha looked and ran away; and as her feet went painfully clumping along the streets in Antoinette's big boots, some tears of forlornness dropped on the pavement. They were hot and bitter.