Free A Daily Rate by Grace Livingston Hill

alone, and take the message of Jesus to those who knew him not, and bear her sorrow more easily by thinking she could do some of the work which they would have done together. But God opened another door for her and showed her plainly that he had called her to a duty at home, and so she took her saddened heart, her sweet face and her tender ways to her sister’s motherless little children and had lived there ever since. Sometimes now, when she thought how she was not wanted in this home, and yet could not go anywhere else by force of circumstances, she would take out that pictured face and wonder if James could know how she was being treated, what he would think and feel about it, and think how he would guard her from the world and shield her if he were only here. And then she would be glad that he could not know, or that if he could, he was where he knew it would not any of it be for long, and that she would soon come home to be with Jesus and with him forevermore, and that time to him was only a brief space. It was at such times that her eyes would take on their far-away look.
    So she sat and worked and thought that afternoon. In due course of time the expected visitors arrived. The woman upstairs heard their voices, and presently they• drew nearer to the stove in the sitting-room. Their talk could be quite distinctly heard now, but Hannah was absorbed in her own thoughts, and she paid no attention as they gossiped on about this one and that, with “You don’t say sos,” and “Well, I always thought as muchs,” and “Did-she-say thats,” until she heard Nettie say, “Yes, she will stay with us this winter anyway. No, it isn’t quite as pleasant as to be alone you know, but then what could we do? She had no home to go to. My husband wanted my cousin to come, too, though it was more than we really could afford to do to feed and clothe two more, but she was very ungrateful, and wanted to have her own way and see the world a little. I expect she’ll come back humbly enough when she’s been away a couple of weeks longer, and if she does I’m sure I don’t know what in the world we shall do with her. Oh yes, aunt Hannah helps me a little here and there, but you can’t ask much of people that arc getting on in years. (Aunt Hannah was forty-nine.) My father always kept her in luxury as she was my mother’s only sister. Yes, people do get spoiled sometimes that way. But, dear me, all she can do wouldn’t make up for the outgo. Yes, she was a sort of acting housekeeper in our home after mother died, but you know no one can ever take a mother’s place. (Johnnie, shut that door and go away and stop your coaxing, or I’ll take you upstairs and give you a good spanking. No, you can’t go down by the pond to play to-day.) No, I never had so much to do with her as the younger children. I was the elder daughter, you know.”
    Aunt Hannah quickly and noiselessly moved away from her position by the drum to the other side of the room. And this from the little girl she had so carefully mothered, and tended, and tried to train! And had loved, too, for Hannah Grant loved all that God loved and placed in her way. Ah, this was hard! And must she go on living here and knowing that she was not wanted, that she was a burden, and that lies—yes, actually lies, for there was no use trying to call them by a softer name— were being told to the people in the village about her? How could she? She could see just how it would go on from year to year. Hiram would come in cross at night and either ignore her altogether, or else contradict every word she spoke, and find fault with anything he knew she had done, in a surly, impersonal way, which he knew and she knew he meant for her. The children would grow up to disrespect her, as they were beginning to do already. And her dear Celia! She was toiling bravely far away from her! There was no prospect of anything better for years to come, perhaps never so long as she lived. She knelt down by