RECIPROCITY.
| "Take upon command what we have, |
| That to your wanting may be ministered." |
"Celia Fair, do you realize what you have done?"
It was Celia who asked herself the question. She was suffering, as reserved people must, from the reaction that follows an unusual outburst of feeling. That had been a happy morning in the arbor; she had let herself go, had listened to her heart and forgotten her pride, and in the company of the merry Arden Foresters, the old joy of youth had asserted itself. The brightness had stayed with her for days; she had dreamed she could make a fairy tale of life, spending her hours in an enchanted forest, and now had come the awakening.
It seemed destined from the beginning to be a day of misfortunes. She woke with a dull, listless feeling, and the first thing to greet her eyes when she went downstairs was the woolly head of Bob, the grandson of her sole dependence, Aunt Sally, waiting on the doorstep to impart the cheering information that granny had the "misery" in her side mighty bad, and couldn't come to-day.
At another time it might not have mattered so much, for the boys were away from home, and breakfast for two did not offer any insuperable difficulties to Celia, but there were currants and raspberries waiting to be made into jelly and preserves. To complicate matters, Mrs. Fair had one of her severe headaches.
The fruit would not keep another day, and Celia couldn't leave the house to go down the hill in search of help, even if she had known just where to seek it. After making her mother as comfortable as possible, she began on the currants with sombre energy.
"May I come in, Miss Celia? Will you lend me a cup?" It was Jack who stood in the door.
"Help yourself," she replied, "I am too busy to stop."
"We want to get some water from the spring," he explained. "Aren't you coming over to-day?"