Year: 1875




Bertha MacAlisIer sat by the window
looking out into the garden. She had laid
down the long, white seam in her lap, and
was watching the vagrant butterflies out
side and the hunming-brd glancing here
and there and making love 10 the flowers.
She bad lived many years in this great old
house, and had passed many summer af-
ternoon looking into the old fashioned gar
den where the roses were, and the blue
eyed larkspurs aud tue heavy-scen,ed syr-
ingas. Bertha was twenty-eighi, and she
d never been in love.


II was very curious, when you think of
it, that Bertha had never loved. She had
had two or three offers soon after she had
LETT school, but none of the suitors had
touched her heart and So she had sent
them away, and then for i've or six years
past no lovers had knocked at her door.
But now, at last, one had come, aud she
was thinking Of him as she sat aud watch
ed the sun-sulfused vagranls of the sum
mer, outside the window. She lived in the
house of her older brother, for they were
orphans, he and she, and had always clung
TO each other. His wife was not an unkind
ly woman, hut she did not understand Ber-
tha, and sometimes the girl realized, witha
sort of pathetic self pity, how weary are
the feet that climb the stIirs of others.


Now, as she sat by the window, her
brothers wi this good, practical, bat un-
sympathetic Maria-was talking with an
aunt that was there en- a visit. Miss MscAl-
lister had paid scant heed TO The drift of their
drowsy discourse, but suddenly sentence
caught her attention. Maria was saying:


81 think she married him just for a
home"


Aunt Sarah's voice took OH certain
touch, almost of soemnily, as she answer
ed: marrying for home is always dan
gerous experiment, and almost always
fatal one"


AT this sentence Bertha MacAlister
turned round quickly. They had touched
the very subject about which she had been
thinking so intently. She Joined in the
conversation almost eagerly: $50 you
think marrying for home is always wrong,
Aunt Sarah?"


az did not say that, child; think it is
always dangerous. And yet l can easily
imagine circumstances under which mid
die aged woman might see that she could
make her life a fountain of blessing by
marrying for a home, aud dispensing from
that home generous hospitality, making
it centre OF warmth aud good cheer and
brightness. And il seems TO me that a
man who would help her TO do and be all
this, she would in tune learn to love-"
"You said middle-aged woman, Aunt
Sarah so you don't think girl could do
| this thing"


"Thered be eOmething unnatural in her
doing ii, II seems To me. Cool calculation
hardly belongs 10 the period of youth and
OF course no honest woman would marry
for such motives without making them
very clear TO the man she married."


Bertha went back into her stronghold Of
silence, and thought steadily. Last night
| George Archibald had asked her to he his
| wife, and tonight he was coming for his
answer. What answer should she give
him? Certainly she did not love him. She
had an ideal of her ow as TO what love was
"a very exalted ideal. Surely, If she loved
a man, it must he that she would prefer
him to all the world-she would rather
have him poor than any other man, rich,
and she would be quite willing to toll and
| struggle for him. She was sure that she
| felt none of this for George Archibald.
Her brother Harry was Infinitely dearer to
her.