"
Viny, having been duly elected to office, considered her honors
settled, so she was little disturbed by any opinions that might
be held concerning her. Therefore she squatted and wriggled in
great delight, grinning at every word that fell from her young
mistress' lips.
"You see, Viny," Caryl was saying, beginning on her confidence,
"I've got an order to teach the little Grant girls how to paint,
and if I can run down there two hours every morning, I'm to have
twenty-five dollars, and Madam Grant is going to give it to me in
advance; that is, after the first quarter. Think, Viny,
TWENTY-FIVE dollars! That's what we want to move with into
Heart's Delight!"
This was the upstairs southwest corner of a little cottage that
for a year or more had been the desideratum of the young girl's
highest hopes that had to wear themselves out in empty longings,
the invalid's scanty exchequer only sufficing for doctor's bills
and similar twelvemonth, along with several other broken-down
lodgers whose slender means compelled them to call this place
"home"--this place where never a bit of sunshine seemed to come;
where even the birds hated to stop for a song as they flew
merrily over the tree-tops. And no wonder. The trees were
scraggy, loppy old things hanging down in dismal sweep over the
leaky roof and damp walls. They had to stay--the lodgers, but
the birds and the sunshine tossed off the whole responsibility of
life in such a gloomy old home, and flitted to gayer quarters.
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