the money’s gone; let’s hope for the best."
"Don’t take on like that!" said Mr. Grubb despairingly,—"don’t! Pray for resignation, can’t you?"
"Pray!" she exclaimed scornfully. "Thank goodness, I’ve got enough self-respect left not to pray!—Yes, I must pray, I must! … Oh, God! I do not ask forgiveness for him or for myself; I only beg that, in some way I cannot see, we may be punished, and she spared!"
And when the stricken soul had fled from her frail body, they who came to prepare her for the grave looked at her face and found it shining with hope.
It was thus that poor little Alisa Bennett assumed maternal responsibilities at the age of ten, and gained her sobriquet of "Marm Lisa." She grew more human, more tractable, under Mr. Grubb’s fostering care; but that blessed martyr had now been dead two years, and she began to wear her former vacuous look, and to slip back into the past that was still more dreadful than the present.
It seemed to Mrs. Grubb more than strange that she, with her desire for free-
