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will say when she sees how you have hacked it to pieces. Really, I’m surprised at you. And to do it without consulting me !”
    â€œThe bush is mine,” muttered Valancy.
    â€œWhat’s that? What did you say, Doss?”
    â€œI only said the bush was mine,” repeated Valancy humbly.
    Mrs. Frederick turned without a word and marched back into the house. The mischief was done now. Valancy knew she had offended her mother deeply and would not be spoken to or noticed in any way for two or three days. Cousin Stickles would see to Valancy’s bringing-up but Mrs. Frederick would preserve the stony silence of outraged majesty.
    Valancy sighed and put away her garden knife, hanging it precisely on its precise nail in the tool-shop. She cleared away the several branches and swept up the leaves. Her lips twitched as she looked at the straggling bush. It had an odd resemblance to its shaken, scrawny donor, little Cousin Georgiana herself.
    â€œI certainly have made an awful-looking thing of it,” thought Valancy.
    But she did not feel repentant—only sorry she had offended her mother. Things would be so uncomfortable until she was forgiven. Mrs. Frederick was one of those women who can make their anger felt all over a house. Walls and doors are no protection from it.
    â€œYou’d better go uptown and git the mail,” said Cousin Stickles, when Valancy went in. “ I can’t go—I feel all sorter peaky and piny this spring. I want you to stop at the drugstore and git me a bottle of Redfern’s Blood Bitters. There’s nothing like Redfern’s Bitters for building a body up. Cousin James says the Purple Pills are the best, but I know better. My poor dear husband took Redfern’s Bitters right up to the day he died. Don’t let them charge you more’n ninety cents. I kin git it for that at the Port. And what have you been saying to your poor mother? Do you ever stop to think, Doss, that you kin only have one mother?”
    â€œOne is enough for me,” thought Valancy undutifully, as she went uptown.
    She got Cousin Stickles’ bottle of bitters and then she went to the post office and asked for her mail at the General Delivery. Her mother did not have a box. They got too little mail to bother with it. Valancy did not expect any mail, except the Christian Times, which was the only paper they took. They hardly ever got any letters. But Valancy rather liked to stand in the office and watch Mr. Carewe, the gray-bearded, Santa-Clausy old clerk, handing out letters to the lucky people who did get them. He did it with such a detached, impersonal, Jove-like air, as if it did not matter in the least to him what supernal joys or shattering horrors might be in those letters for the people to whom they were addressed. Letters had a fascination for Valancy, perhaps because she so seldom got any. In her Blue Castle exciting epistles, bound with silk and sealed with crimson, were always being brought to her by pages in livery of gold and blue, but in real life her only letters were occasional perfunctory notes from relatives or an advertising circular.
    Consequently she was immensely surprised when Mr. Carewe, looking even more Jovian than usual, poked a letter out to her. Yes, it was addressed to her plainly, in fierce, black hand: “Miss Valancy Stirling, Elm Street, Deerwood”—and the postmark was Montreal. Valancy picked it up with a little quickening of her breath. Montreal! It must be from Dr. Trent. He had remembered her, after all.
    Valancy met Uncle Benjamin coming in as she was going out and was glad the letter was safely in her bag.
    â€œWhat,” said Uncle Benjamin, “is the difference between a donkey and a postage-stamp?”
    â€œI don’t know. What?” answered Valancy dutifully.
    â€œOne you lick with a stick and the other you stick with a lick. Ha, ha!”
    Uncle Benjamin passed in, tremendously pleased with