Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley

"Ma, I was selfish!" cried Amarilly remorsefully. "I'll work like a

hired man!"

Amarilly thereupon bravely assumed a cheerful mien and looked over the

Boarder's figures, listening with apparently great enthusiasm to the

plans and projects. But when she was upstairs in her own little bed and

each and every other Jenkins was wrapt in happy slumber, she turned her

face to the wall, and wept long, silently, and miserably. Far-away

fields and pastures did not look alluring to this little daughter of the

city who put bricks and mortar and lighted streets above trees and

meadows, for Amarilly was entirely metropolitan; sky-scrapers were her

birthright, and she loved every inch of her city.

"But it's best for them," she acknowledged.

A little pang came with the realization that they who had been so

dependent upon her guardianship for guidance were entirely competent to

act without her.

"It's Flam. He's growed up!" she sobbed, correctness of speech slipping

from her in her grief. "And he don't know near so much as I do, only

he's a man--or going to be--so what he says goes."

And with this bitter but inevitable recognition of the things that are,

Amarilly sobbed herself to sleep.