Chapter 12 CRUMBS.

Desire Ledwith was, at this epoch, a perplexity and a worry,-even a positive terror sometimes,-to her mother.

It was not a case of the hen hatching ducks, it was rather as if a hen had got a hawk in her brood.

Desire's demurs and questions,-her dissatisfactions, sittings and contempts,-threatened now and then to swoop down upon the family lif