The Newtown bee., 1880-03-10

were 8 little pleased to see that she had heart, and could really love somebody. We came to the house only while we were preparing ourselves to make our own,w way in life; for we each had some | little aptitude, I with music, and Georgie with painting, and Anne-well, Anne was our beauty, and was to be maaried to Francis Evans at some time or other: that was her aptitude apparently. But while we were in her house we determined to do our whole duty to grandmamma, forgetting the years of | neglect and oblivion, and returning to her what we might for the remembrance of us at last. We never intruded on her in the solemn hours when she sat before her glass if we could avoid it. except once, that I remember; we always spoke kindly of Amelia Gresham, and treated her like princess on her rare and brief visits.
 The only time that we varied our man. ners toward Amelia was when she once tossed her head and gave grandmamma some shockingly rude speech on one of these occasions, and started to run from the room with her fingers at her ears, when Anne, whose position as the mar ried one-or at least, you know, we felt as if she were as good as the married one-gave her more authority than the rest of us, laid her hand timidly upon Amelia's arm and said, in half-whis- per: (" It isn't possible you are so cruel as to wound the old heart that loves you sow And Amelia, who had perhaps never been reproved in all her life be- fore, turned on Anne with gaze of as- tonishment, and then broke out laugh ing. "Oh, you little nonnette!" she laughed. ''If you are going to be so careful of peoples feelings, you had bet ter begin by considering mine, bored to death with the thousand-and-first hear ing of this sort of stuff"
 Bored to death, "said Georgie," when Us like storYw
 Grandmamma was looking at Amelia. l saw a tear suddenly start in her hard, glittering eye.
 "Ah, don't mind her," whispered. stealing my hand over and taking hers, for l sat on 8 low seat near her; " she's only jesting."
 And grandmamma looked in the fire then, without making any reply, but took my hand between her own; she showed her age in her hands, and always wore fne-meshed mitts to hide their shriveled backs, just as she bound her throat up high with lace. But Amelia saw the little action, which, am sure, meant nothing, and burst out in one of her rages, which grandmamma, for all her majesty, had trembled under before; i; because it is always the one that loves that is at a disadvantage; the other is in the saddle.
 Oh, yes!' she cried. "Honeying round her with your pussying ways Let me tell you she likes honesty. And you won't get dollar of Mrs. Gresham's money, for all"
 "Let me tell you!' blazed out our gentle Anne at that, "that we don't want a dollar of Mrs. Gresham's money. We are making ourselves ready to earn our own. And we think more of many other things than we do of money. And whoever gets it, anyway, we shall not forget that it was our grandfather's money, not theirs"
 "That is so," said Grandmamma Gresham, as if the thought had never occurred to her before. But she rose slowly, and grasped her cane, and went away to her own rooms, and we did not see her for three days, Rose waiting on her till she was ready to reappear again.
 "Isn't it too bad, Francis," asked Anne that night, "that anybody should have our own grandfather's house but ourselves. But she checked herself as Amelia came back with a rose in her hair, and even frowned down Georgie's innocent remark about it's being such 8 dear old place.
 And that it was; an elm-shaded, many-gabled, century-old house, set in gardens, with patch of blue lake just below it, and the slope of a green hill just behind it-a hill on whose summit the cannon had been fired every fourth of July, and on every twenty second of February, and on every anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, since time began for those days.
 It was not great while after the night when Amelia came back with the rose in her hair, that I began to notice a strange trouble in our sweet Anne's face. Her gray eyes would dilate and grow fixed in reverie, and at one time such deep color would burn in on her face, and at another she would be deathly white; that at last when l saw Francis walking in the garden with Amelia, and her glance pursuing them, I knew what it meant. I might have known before if had had the sense to understand the angry expostulation of Grandmamma Gresham with Amelia that once overheard; but it never oc- cured to me that any one could be so shameful as Amelia was. But I knew how to sympathize with Anne better than once might have done, to be ten der with her, and to let her alone; for I had begun to think that, after all, giv- ing music.lessons would not be the work of my life, since Dr. Dinsmore had be- gun to visit us.
 "It is 8 pity" said Grandmamma Gresham to him one day, "that such nice girls should be destitute. But tboy, fbora ;c opa tbipn c,,oh ,,ioa o,;,.Ic