CHAPTER IV.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13204, 30 June 1906, Page 6

CHAPTER IV.

THE YOUNG HOUSEKEEPER.

•'Oh, dear me \" a prolonged sigh. •'What can 1 do? I—l1 — 1 wonder how it will all end ? And there's Arehiq wanting boots, and as to Bertie's knickerbockers, they're simply disgfgceful. Bless him, he doesn't mind it. Childhood is bappy and content with so little, which 'is a wise dispensation of Providence, for I'm sure, when one's old, cares' come quickly enough. If only mamma, their mamma, 1 mean, had lived, just I—just1 — just to kave taken care of papa, all tl*« responsibility would not have rested entirely upon my shoulders. Oh, dear me ! 1 did think I could have managed Archie's boots -this week— his littla rosy toes are making themaelves self— evident through those he •has — and there come these annoying bills." I

The speaker , was seated on the f nill of an open French window, belonging to a sm a ll parlour, the furniture and uquare carpet of which as eloquently spoke of straitened circumstances as did the neatly patched and darned cheap dress she wore. Bad anyone "been by, be could not have failed to have been astonished, then to have laughed outright art the girl's soliloquy, and little vibration of envy that had sounded in the sweet, fresh young- voice* i when its owner had referred to the happiness of ignorant childhood, and the cares of older persons.

That tho latter she applied to herself was evident, and jret Dorky Pryor bad only just, as the- Waying is, turned seventeen. . Girl ! In yen* s she was little more I'baii a child herself.

Ah, true ; but experience ? In that she might baVe >be»n thirty. Not that she looked it ; not at all. Though the fair brow w a s contracted, ; and a world of trouble was in the large violet eyes, it was a girl's face still, and the sweetest, prettiest, most lovable in all Brambleside. (To be. continued.)