Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-09-05

the monStrouS cheat!
 Her eyes famed clear; the torrent of feeling swept away reserve and cold ness.
 "I understandr' March said, with sympathetic warmth. You never dis appoint mo. Teli me what l can do to help you. can not let you endure all this alone any longer"
 Nobody can take my share of the burdenl l would hardly know myself without 1t. It will be the heavier for my sisters distress and Hester's anger when they hear what l have decided to do. Hester was on her way over to your house when you met her, full of news she could not wait until tomorrow to tell. My mothers only brother went to Japan thirty years ago, and became rich. He died last March, leaving most of his fortune to benevolent institutions there, and in America. To each of us, his sisters children, he bequeathed ten thousand dollars. It is not fortune, but with our modest tastes, and when joined to the little I already have, it will support us decently. My first thought, when the news reached us, week ago, was: Now Mr.Wayt need never take another chargel We need not live upon tainted meansr"
 "You are a noble woman, Hetty-" She interrupted him.
 II am notl This is not self sacrifice, but self preservation. If the money had not been given to us, 1 must have found some way out of false Fbsition. I want you to tell your father all you know. Keep back nothing I have told you. He is a good and merciful man. Let him speak openly to MT. Wayt and | forbid him ever to enter tho pulpit again upon penalty of public exposure and suspension from the ministry. What Judge Gilchrist says will have weight. With all his high looks and sounding talk, MT. Wayt is a coward. He would not venture to resist the de- cision. Then, we will go away quietly. I have thought of the little town in which my sister and were born. Liv- ing is cheap there and there are excel | lent schools for the children. Twenty five thousand dollars will go very far in that region and we can be honest peo- pie once more."
 "You have arranged it all, have you?" said March, not at all in the tone she had expected to hear. "Give them the cheap town, and tho good schools and tho S25, 900, by all means. They can have every thing but your'
 
 The long storm in August set in next | day. A fine, close drizzle vailed the world by seven o'clock. At s:sO, the twins and Fanny needed their water proof cloaks for the walk to school. By noon the batter on the piazza roof and falling floods upon lawn and garden and streets were slow, but abundant. It was scrubbing day and closet day, and, as Hester fretted sometimes to method ical Mary Ann on Friday-''all the rest of the week." below stairs. Hetty had to prepare dessert and to set the lunch table. Before going down she made up little fire in the sewing-room, and put out Hester's color box, glass of water, stretching board, paper and easel, with in easy reach, should she decide to use them. Silently, and not too suggestive ly, she set upon the table near by vase | containing some fine specimens of the moccasln flower sent in by May Gil christ with a note addressed to Queen Nab" Hester hated hints, but if she lacked a study she would not have to | look far for it.
 It was "a bad day" with her. Her mother attributed it partly to her disap- pointment at not seeing her crony teacher.
 l Hetty, who had put the excited child to bed as soon as she got into the house the night before, held her peace. Mrs. Wayt, lowering from nursery and her husbands chamber to the sewing-room, saw that in her taciturn daughters countenance that warned and kept her aloof. Another of Testers biting say ings was that her mother, on the day succeeding one of her spouses' ''seiz- ures" was "betwixt the devil and the deep sea-" She never admitted, even to her sister, that "dear Percy" was moro than "unfortunate," yet read the girls disapprobation in averted looks and stu diously commonplace talk.
 Wan and limp the cripple reclined among the cushions Hetty packed about her in her wheeled chair. Blue shad- ows ringed mouth and eyes, and stretched themselves in the hollowed temples; the delft fingers were nerve less. Most of the time she seemed to watch the rain under dropping eyelids, so transparent as to show the dark irides beneath.
 At half past eleven her mother stole in like bit of drifting down.
 "Dear, have promised papa to go up to your room and lie down for half an hour. Annie is with him. She amuses him, and will be very good, she says. I told her to let you know if she wanted any thing. May l leave the door open? She can not turn this stiff bolt"
 Annie was one of Testers weak points. Baby" never made her nervous and impatient, and much of the little ones precocity was due to intimate com panionship with the disabled sister, whose plaything she was.
 "Yes. All rightp murmured Hester, closing her eyes entirely.
 She was deathly pallid in the uncol- ored gloom of a rainy noon.
 "Or-if you feel like taking a nap yourself?" hesitated Mrs. Wayt Tactful with her husband, and tender with all har boOSa. hold ba had