The carpenter had worked faithfully all his life, but his meager savings had all been swept away by the failure of a savings bank to which he had trusted them. During the last two years of financial panic and stress he had been much out of work, and lately he had just caught up with the rents again, and given his wife and Floy their simple spring outfits. There was nothing, nothing for them to look to but the labor of their hands. Poor Floy did not know how to do anything useful, they had spoiled and petted her so, and Mrs. Banks, who did plain sewing for the neighbors sometimes, knew that all her profits would not pay the cottage rent. When the funeral expenses had been paid out of the money for her husband’s last job, there remained to the poor woman only the simple furniture of the tiny cottage and five dollars in her purse. “What are we to do?” she sobbed, pitifully. It was then that Maybelle Maury came to the rescue. “Mamma will employ you in her house as a seamstress; and papa will give Floy a place as salesgirl,” said the dark-eyed beauty, cheerfully. “Oh, I can not be parted from my child!” exclaimed the unhappy widow, tearfully. Maybelle curled an imperious lip, and answered: “That is nonsense! You can not keep Floy with you now. She will have to earn her living like other poor girls!” Floy, sitting over at the window in dreary silence, thought, exultantly: “Wait till my lover comes back from Europe, Miss Maybelle, and see! Oh, it will break your proud heart when St. George Beresford marries me! And how he will laugh when I tell him of her grand airs now!” She longed to startle Maybelle now by telling her that she would have no need to work for her living, that she was soon to marry a millionaire’s son, and could take care of Mrs. Banks in luxury; but she remembered that Beresford had told her not to betray their secret till he gave her leave, because he must first propitiate his own little world. So she kept back the words, and at last said, with a careless little air that angered Maybelle deeply: “We may as well accept these positions now, dearest auntie, and try to bear the separation as best we can for awhile, but after I am married, and that may be before long, you shall come and live in my new home, and we shall be as happy as possible without our dear lost one!” She could not forbear this little boast in her resentment against proud Maybelle, and the beauty looked at her angrily while Mrs. Banks exclaimed in smiling astonishment: “Married--married! Why, who ever put such a notion in that little giddy head? Who would marry a child like you?” “A child, auntie? Why, I was seventeen the day before the picnic, so I’ll be eighteen my very next birthday, and many a girl is married before eighteen. Why, I may be engaged already for all you know to the contrary--although I don’t swear that I am!” concluded Floy, fearing she had said too much, and not intending to arouse their suspicions.