"What are you ba—crying about!" asked Peace in awed tones, as the other girl sniffed suspiciously and then wiped her eyes, already red with weeping. She expected to be told to mind her business, but contrary to her expectations, Faith answered:
"This is the saddest story,—all about a girl who loved one man and had to marry another."
Peace's nose curled scornfully, and she said, with great contempt, "I don't see any use in bawl—crying about that. Those story people never lived. Real folks have more sense."
But Faith had gone back to her magazine of sorrows, and never even heard this small sister's criticism. So Peace dropped down on a heap of sacking, propped her chin up with her elbows on her knees, and fell to studying the face opposite her, noting with alarm how thin it had grown, and how darkly circled were the brown eyes so like her own. Fear lest Dr. Bainbridge did not know how ill she really was gripped her heart, and she sighed heavily just as Faith finished her chapter and roused to search for the next number of the magazine.
"What is the matter?" she demanded, looking at the sober little face with surprise.
"Are you sick?" asked Peace in an awestruck whisper, ignoring her sister's question.
"No. Why? My head aches some, but that is all."
"I sh'd think it would ache," cried the child in sudden indignation. "Why did you poke up here where there ain't any window to read by? You'll be blind some day if you amuse your eyes like that. Teacher said so to all our class the day she found Tessie Hunt reading on the basement stairs. If you've got to read all the time, why don't you go out-doors or by a window? It's enough to make anyone's head ache the way you mope around reading all the time. Dr. Bainbridge says as soon as you get up and go to work you'll be all right."
Faith's face flushed angrily and she demanded, with some heat, "What do you know about what Dr. Bainbridge says?"
"I asked him a-purpose to see whether you were going to be an angel soon."