Hence when Annette had completed her second year at the High School her mother withdrew her from the school and its associations and found her a place in the new Fancy Box Factory, where girls could obtain "an illigant and refoined job with good pay as well." This change in Annette's outlook brought wrathful disappointment to the head master, Alex Day, who had taken a very special pride in Annette's brilliant school career and who had outlined for her a University course.

To Annette herself the ending of her school days was a bitter grief, the bitterness of which would have been greatly intensified had she been able to measure the magnitude of the change to be wrought in her life by her mother's foolish vanity and unwise preference of her son's to her daughter's future.
The determining factor in Annette's submission to her mother's will was consideration for her brother and his career.

For while for her father she cherished an affectionate pride and for her mother an amused and protective pity, her great passion was for her brother--her handsome, vivacious, audacious and mercurial brother, Tony.

With him she counted it only joy to share her all too meagre wages whenever he found himself in financial straits.

And a not infrequent situation this was with Tony, who, while he seemed to have inherited from his mother the vivacity, quick wit and general empty-headedness, from his father got nothing of the thrift and patient endurance of grinding toil characteristic of the French-Canadian habitant.