If Theodosia had not been of a sweet nature, scorn would have embittered her; as it was, she was still loving, but she grew tired. She taught a little, in the odd chances that served, and gained a few pence here and there by it, for teaching brought an absurdly pitiful wage. She went to the simple entertainments of the place, which were mostly among the older people, and played the piano sometimes at them, when she could be spared long enough from her duties at home to practice beforehand. The young people around showed the usual rural effect of propinquity and childish habit in pairing off insensibly as they grew up; it was always said of such and such a one, in local parlance, that they “went together,” and arrangements were made in view of this known fact whenever festivities were in prospect, but Dosia had never “gone with” anyone for more than a few days at a time, when some young visitor staying in the place had given her the preference in the dances and picnics and straw-rides. For the rest, she sewed and mended and baked and took care of the children, and read, and found her father’s walking-sticks for him, and filled the lamps and fed the dogs and went on errands. Her father and stepmother were quite contented, and why should she not be? [Illustration: _Theodosia_] But there came a time when there seemed to be no point to living; after the day’s work, what was there? What would there ever be? The children played merrily and went to bed happy. The father and mother loved each other, their very limitations made their engrossing interest, they were contented to be discontented. Dosia took herself to task for her own discontent, she prayed against it, she made bracing rules for herself which she strove to follow; she read, she sewed with fresh vigor, she was nobly self-sacrificing. Mrs. Linden often said that she didn’t know how they would ever get along without Dosia. She also often spoke of the advantages she would like to give the girl, and at first Dosia had listened with pleased hope to these aspirations, but as no effort was ever made to realize them in even the simplest way, they only served after a while to show more plainly the flatness of living.