There was no foolish hope in little Annie Eustace's heart; there would be no spire of aspiration added to her dreams because of the meeting, but she tasted the sweet of approbation, and it was a tonic which she sorely needed, and which inspired her to self-assertion in a childishly naughty and mischievous way.

It was after supper that evening, that Annie strolled a little way down the street, taking advantage of Miss Bessy Dicky's dropping in for a call, to slink unobserved out of her shadowy corner, for the Eustaces were fond of sitting in the twilight.

The wind had come up, the violent strong wind which comes out of the south, and Annie walked very near the barberry hedge which surrounded Doctor Sturtevant's grounds, and the green muslin lashed against it to its undoing.

When Annie returned, the skirt was devastated and Aunt Harriet decreed that it could not be mended and must be given to the poor Joy children.

There were many of those children of a degenerate race, living on the outskirts of Fairbridge, and Annie had come to regard them as living effigies of herself, since everything which she had outgrown or injured past repair, fell to them.