Anna smiled, in spite of herself. "I hav'n't made any calculations about the matter, Caroline. My calculations have not turned out so well that I should want to make any more," she added, rather bitterly.
"Just so, honey. You've been disappointed, I don't deny it; and no wonder you feel bad. But the question is, are you going to feel as bad as you can, or are you going to make the best of it? You know what the Bible says about taking up the cross, Miss Anna, my dear. Now this disappointment is a cross that He has sent you, and the question is whether you are going to take it up and bear it like a Christian or sit down on the ground and fret under it, like a baby?"
Anna seemed a good deal interested by this view of the case. "But it hardly seems right to call such a thing as this a cross," said she.
Caroline smiled. "Well, I don't call it the biggest kind of a cross," said she, "that is compared to what some folks have to carry—old Mrs. Williams, for instance, with her bad leg and her rheumatic shoulders and her poor consumptive daughter. Still it is a cross for you to be disappointed of your friend's visit, and to have to stay alone all the week; but I would not make it any worse than it is, if I were you. Now I shall go and get your supper and bring it to you in here, and I guess you'll find you want some, after all."
Anna sat thinking, after Caroline left the room, but it was with quite a different expression of face.
"How silly I am!" she was saying to herself. "Only yesterday I was reading the lives of Margaret Rogers and Lady Jane Gray, and wishing I had lived in times when there were some great things to do; and hear I am actually crying like a baby over the very first thing that comes to try my strength, and sitting down as though them were no more to be done in the world, because Lillie Adams is going to Europe. I won't be such a fool, and that is all about it. Come, Pussy, get up and make yourself agreeable!"
Pussy was very ready to exert herself for Anna's benefit and her own, and the two were in the midst of a famous romp, when Caroline entered with her dainty tray of provisions.
"There, now! I call that something like!" said she, much pleased with the change. "Come and eat your supper, honey, while it is hot."
Anna disposed of her batter-puffs and other good things in a way which showed that her trouble had not entirely destroyed her appetite, and she could not deny that she enjoyed her supper.
"Caroline," said she, "you know that breakfast shawl Aunt Anna left here? It is rather faded, but not at all worn out. I have been thinking that I might ravel it out and make it over with some stripes of a new bright color. That would make it quite pretty again, and it would be nice and warm for Mrs. Williams' lame shoulders."