"Ma, I was selfish!" cried Amarilly remorsefully. "I'll work like a
hired man!"
Amarilly thereupon bravely assumed a cheerful mien and looked over the
Boarder's figures, listening with apparently great enthusiasm to the
plans and projects. But when she was upstairs in her own little bed and
each and every other Jenkins was wrapt in happy slumber, she turned her
face to the wall, and wept long, silently, and miserably. Far-away
fields and pastures did not look alluring to this little daughter of the
city who put bricks and mortar and lighted streets above trees and
meadows, for Amarilly was entirely metropolitan; sky-scrapers were her
birthright, and she loved every inch of her city.
"But it's best for them," she acknowledged.
A little pang came with the realization that they who had been so
dependent upon her guardianship for guidance were entirely competent to
act without her.
"It's Flam. He's growed up!" she sobbed, correctness of speech slipping
from her in her grief. "And he don't know near so much as I do, only
he's a man--or going to be--so what he says goes."
And with this bitter but inevitable recognition of the things that are,
Amarilly sobbed herself to sleep.