"All right," and he went to the hat-rack to get his muffler and cap, preparatory to again facing the storm. The snow had been falling steadily all day. Drifting almost to the height of the kitchen window, it whirled about the house and beat against the window panes with a muffled sound that was inexpressibly dreary to the girl, who felt herself the center of all this pitiful human contention. "David, David; where have you been all day, and where are you going now?" His mother looked at his gray, haggard face and tried to guess his hidden trouble, the first he had ever kept from her. "Mother, I am not a child, and you can't expect me to hang about the stove like a cat, all my life." It was his first harsh word to her and she shrank before it as if it had been a blow. David, her boy, to speak to her like that! She turned quickly away to hide the tears, the first she had ever shed on his account. "Here, Anna," she said, struggling to recover her composure, "take this bucket and get it filled for me, please." The girl reached for her cloak that hung on a peg near the door. "No, Anna, you shall not go out for water a night like this; it's not the work for you to do." David had sprung forward and caught the bucket from her hand and plunged with it into the storm. Kate's quick eyes caught the expression of David's face--while Mrs. Bartlett only heard his words. She gave Anna a searching look as she said: "So it is you whom David loves." At last Kate understood the secret of Anna's distracted face--and at last the mother understood the secret of her boy's moodiness--he loved Anna. And her heart was filled with bitterness and anger at the very thought; she had taken her boy, this stranger, with whom the tongue of scandal was busy. The kindly, gentle, old face lost all its sweetness; jealous anger filled it with ugly lines. Turning to Anna she said: "It would have been better for all of us if we had not taken you in that day to break up our home with your mischief." Anna was cut to the quick. "Oh, Mrs. Bartlett, please do not say that; I will go away as soon as you like, but it is not with my consent that David has these foolish fancies about me." "And do you mean to say that you have never encouraged him," indignantly demanded the irate mother, who with true feminine inconsistency would not have her boy's affections go begging, even while she scorned the object of it. "Encouraged him? I have begged, entreated him to let me alone; I do not want his love." An angry sparrow defending her brood could not have been more indignantly demonstrative than this gentle old lady. "And isn't he good enough for you, Miss?" she asked in a voice that shook with wrath. "Dear Mrs. Bartlett, would you have me take his love and return it?" "No, no; that would never do!" and the inconsistent old soul rocked herself to and fro in an agony of despair.