Brentwood (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill

as she eyed the house with displeasure.

      "Yes ma'am, this is the number you give me," said the man, "1465 Aster Street."

      "Yes, but they might have moved, you know," said Marjorie hopefully.

      So, on feet that were strangely unsteady, she got out and went slowly up the two wooden steps to the door that sadly needed paint. There was no bell so she knocked timidly, and then again louder as she heard no sound of life within. She was just about to turn away, almost hoping they were gone, and she would have no clue to search further, when she heard hurried steps on a bare floor, and the door was opened sharply, almost impatiently. Then she found herself face to face with a replica of herself!

      "Does Mrs. George Gay live here?"

      She said the words because she had prepared them on her lips to say, but she was so startled at the apparition of herself in the flesh standing before her that she did not realize she had asked the question. She just stood there and stared and stared at this other girl who was so like and yet so unlike herself.

      The other girl had the same cloud of golden hair, only it was flying in every direction, not smoothly waved in the way it ought to lie; the same brown eyes, only they were full of bitterness, and trouble, and a kind of fright in the depths of them; the same delicate lips, only they were set in hard lines as if the grim realities of life had been too close to her. She was wearing a soiled and torn flimsy dress of flowered material that was most unbecoming, and a cheap old coat with all the buttons off or hanging by threads. Her hands were small but they were swollen and red with the cold and she shivered as she stood grimly there staring at her most unwelcome guest.

      "Well," she said with a final little shiver, opening the door a trifle wider, "I suppose you must be my twin sister! Will you come in?" Her voice was most ungracious, but she stood aside in the tiny hall to let the other girl pass in.

      "Oh! Are you—? That is—I didn't know—!" said Marjorie in confusion. Then she turned suddenly to the taxi and nodded brightly.

      "It's all right," she said. "They still live here!"

      "But they probably won't for long," added the other girl grimly.

      "Oh, are you going to move? Then I'm glad I came before you did, for I might have had trouble finding you."

      "Yes," said the other girl unsmiling, "you probably would." Then she motioned toward a single wooden chair in the middle of the room. "Won't you sit down? We still have one chair left, though I believe Ted is going to take it to the pawnshop this afternoon. There isn't any heat here. Will you take cold?" There was something contemptuous in the tone of this hostile sister. Marjorie gave her a quick troubled glance.

      "Are you really my sister?"

      "I suppose I must be," said the other girl listlessly as if it didn't in the least matter, "there's your picture up there on the mantel. Maybe you'll recognize that. If you had waited till afternoon that would probably have been gone too."

      Marjorie turned startled eyes toward the stark little high wooden shelf that ran across the narrow chimney over a wall-register, and saw her own photographed face in its silver frame smiling at her and looking utterly out of place in that bleak little room. She turned back to look at the other girl wistfully.

      "You know, I didn't even know I had a sister until day before yesterday!"

      The other looked at her with hard unbelieving eyes.

      "That's odd, isn't it? How did that come about?"

      "No one told me," she answered sadly.

      "Oh, yes? Then how did you find out?"

      "I found a letter—from Moth—that is from my adopted mother after she died. She left a letter to tell me about my people."

      "You mean Mr. and Mrs. Wetherill are both dead?" The tone was incredulous.

      "Yes. I am alone in the world now, except for you—my own family."

      The other girl's face grew very hard and bitter now.

      "Oh!" she said shortly. "I wondered why you came after all these years when you haven't paid the slightest attention to us. Not even a Christmas card now and then! You with your grand home and your aristocratic parents, and your fine education! What could you possibly want with us? But I see it now. They have died and left you penniless, I suppose, after all their grand pretensions, and you have come back on us to live. Well, we'll take you in of course. Mother wouldn't have it otherwise, but I'll say it's something like the end of a perfect day to have you turn up just now."

      "Oh, I'm sorry," said Marjorie distressed at once. "I ought to have telephoned to see if it was convenient, but I was so eager to find you. And you don't at all realize anything about it. I've not come home to be a burden on you. I thought maybe I could spend Christmas with you. I know how you must feel. You are moving, and frightfully busy, but you'll let me help, won't you?"

      "Moving!" sneered her sister. "Yes, we'd be moving right away today if we had any place to move to! And any money to move with! And anything to move! Christmas! I didn't know there was such a thing any more!" And suddenly she dropped down in the vacant chair, jerking her hands out from the ragged pockets of her old coat, put them up to her face and burst into tears, sobbing until her slender body shook with the force of the sobs. Yet it was all done very quietly as if there was some reason why she must not make a noise.

      Marjorie went close and put her arms about her, her face down against the other's wet cheek.

      "Oh, my dear!" she said brokenly. "My dear!" And then her own tears were falling, and she held the weeping girl close. "But you are cold! So cold you are trembling! Can't we go into another room where it is warm and let me tell you how you have misunderstood me? I won't stay if you don't want me, but I can't bear to have you misunderstand me. Come!"

      Then the girl lifted her face and spoke fiercely again.

      "Come?" she said. "Where shall we come? Don't you know there hasn't been a teaspoonful of coal in this house for two days, and that we've burned up all the chairs that aren't sold to try and keep from freezing—except this one that has to be sold to get some medicine for Mother? Don't you know Father hasn't had any work for nine months, and Mother is sick upstairs in bed with all the blankets we own piled around her and a hot-water bag at her feet? I borrowed the hot water from a house in the next block, and it won't stay hot long, I had to bring it so far. She's getting pneumonia, I'm afraid, and I had to lose my job to stay home and take care of her. Don't you know that Dad is sick himself, but he had to go out and beg the landlord to let us stay a few days more till Mother is better—? And I guess Ted has lost his newspaper route, and I've had to take the children to the neighborhood nursery, to keep them warm and fed? If you stay here with us you'll have to pawn that fur coat to get enough to eat! You'd better go back to your fine friends and get a job or something. We haven't anything in the house to eat but two slices of stale bread I saved to make toast for Mother. She'd likely give them to you if she knew, for she's cried over you night after night lately. Dad has been eating at the mission for two weeks to save what we had for the rest of us. We pawned everything we had for a pittance to live on. We just finished Mother's silver wedding spoons, and there isn't anything left but your picture frame and Mother's wedding ring, and I can't bear to go and take that off of her. It would break her heart!"

      Suddenly the sister's head went down again and more silent sobs shook her. It was terrible to look upon. Marjorie felt it was the most awful sight she had ever seen. She stood there appalled as the bald truths were thrown at her like missiles. And that was her sister sitting there shaking with cold and misery! And she was standing here done up in costly furs, never having known what it was to be cold or hungry or frightened like that! How she despised herself!

      Suddenly she stood back and unbuttoned her coat, slid out of it and wrapped it warmly around her sister.

      "There! There! You precious sister!" she said softly, laying her lips on the other girl's.

      But her sister struggled up fiercely, her pride blazing in her eyes, her arms flinging off the coat. "No!" she said, "no, I won't wear your