r's spirit and good sense, and so long as these
admirable qualities did not take her away from him, and paternal pride
and affection were both gratified, he saw no reason to complain. This
satisfaction, however, did not prevent his "stirring her up" now and
then, as he said, that he might sun himself in the glow of her youthful
temper and chuckle inwardly over her smartness.

"Well, Dot, how's Rob?" he asked jovially one evening at supper about a
month later. "Does he still think he's worth running after?"

"I don't know whether he thinks so or not, but I know he is," asserted
the young woman, tilting her chin and looking away from her father with
a cool filial contempt for his pleasantries bred by familiarity. "He's
well enough, but the old man that lives with him had a fall and broke
his leg, and Rob has to take care of him."

Old Mrs. Moxom laid down her knife and fork, and dropped her hands in
her lap hopelessly.

"Well, now, what made him go and do that?" she asked, with a fretful
quaver in her voice, as if this were the last straw.

"I don't know, grandmother," answered Ethel cheerfully. "As soon as he's
well enough to be moved, they're going to take him to the county
hospital. I guess that's the poorhouse. But Rob says he's so old they're
afraid the bone won't knit; he suffers like everything. Poor old man,
I'm awful sorry for him. Rob has to do all the cooking."

The old woman pushed back her chair and brushed the crumbs from her
apron.

"I guess I'll go upstairs and lay down awhile, Emma. I been kind of
light-headed all afternoon. I guess I set too long over them carpet
rags."

She got up and crossed the room hurriedly. Her son looked after her with
anxious eyes. Presently they heard her toiling up the stairs with the
slow, inelastic tread of infancy and old age.

"I don't know what's come over your mother, Jason," said his wife. "She
hasn't been herself all summer. Sometimes I think I'd ought to write to
the girls."

"Oh, I guess she'll be all right," said Jason, with masculine
hopefulness. "Dot, you'd better go up by and by and see if grandmother
wants anything."

Safe in her own room, Mrs. Moxom sank into a chair with a long breath of
relief and dismay.

"The poorhouse!" she gasped. "That seems about as mortifying as to own
up to your girls that you wasn't never rightly married to their father."

She got up and wandered across the room to the bureau. "I expect he's
changed a good deal," she