Poor Amy! All her Christmas cheer had died from her heart. She felt that it would be almost wicked to remind her father of this, his "life work," of which she had not heard him speak since he left Fairacres. Yet it was his. He had given years to its completion, so far as it had neared that point. Mr. Wingate regarded her keenly. "Well?" he asked. "Oh, I don't know what to say. Have you nothing to propose?" "Only what I did. To cut it up and sell the faces as so many small canvases. That would partially repay me for the things he still owes for--the paints and so on. But I detest the thing so I hate to spread the misery of it." "Repay you? Do you mean that you believe you have a right--you _own_ that picture?" "Certainly." "Why, it is the labor of--it means many years out of my poor father's life. Can such a thing be 'owned' by anybody except him?" "Yes, of course. Hark you. You go home and tell him what I offer. I will take the picture off his hands and allow him--hmm--maybe two hundred dollars; or, he can take it and owe me that much more. In any case I want to get rid of it. I won't have it left here much longer. I shall have other uses for this room, maybe. Anyway, I mean to get that off the place." Amy moved slowly toward the door. She did not know how to reply, and she felt her cousin was a very hard, unjust man. Yet she agreed with him that the picture was enough to make a person wish it out of sight, even out of existence. At the doorway he arrested her steps, by laying his hand upon her shoulder. "Help me down; I'm afraid of stairs. And there's another thing--that donkey." "Oh, yes; I had forgotten Balaam. May I ride him home? Will you have him brought around for me?" "Eh? What? Not so fast--not quite so fast! No, I don't mean the stairs. I can manage this pace for them. I mean the donkey. It came here of its own accord. It gave me an idea. If your brother wants to sell him--By the way, how do you expect to pay the rent?" Amy stopped short, halfway down the stairs, and so suddenly that Mr. Wingate remonstrated. "If you'd give warning of these spasmodic actions of yours, it would be more comfortable for those depending on you. There, please move along." "The rent? I had not thought. Didn't my mother attend to that?" "For the first quarter year, she did. To whom must I look now?" Unmindful, since this new distressing question had been raised, how much she inconvenienced him, Amy sat plump down and leaned her head against the hand-rail. It always appeared to aid her reflective powers if she could rest her troubled head against something material. "I'll try to think. I earn two dollars and a half a week."