red Mrs. Dodd, of Dorothy, inclining
her head toward Mrs. Holmes's door.

"Be it ever so humble," sang Dick, strolling out of the room, "there's no
place like Holmes's."

Mrs. Carr admitted that her ears were not yet so calloused but that the
sound gave her distinct pleasure.

"If that there little limb of Satan had have throwed his milk in anybody
else's face," went on Mrs. Dodd, "all she'd have said would have been:
'Ebbie, don't spill your nice milk. That's naughty.'"

Her imitation of the fond mother's tone and manner was so wickedly exact
that Dorothy laughed heartily. The others had fled to a more quiet spot,
except Willie and Rebecca, who were fighting for a place at the keyhole of
their mother's door. Finally, Willie gained possession of the keyhole, and
the ingenious Rebecca, lying flat on her small stomach, peered under the
door, and obtained a pleasing view of what was going on inside.

"Listen at that!" cried Mrs. Dodd, her countenance fairly beaming with
innocent pleasure. "I'm gettin' most as much good out of it as I would
from goin' to the circus. Reckon it's a slipper, for it sounds just like
little Jimmie Young's weepin' did the night I come home from my fifth
honeymoon.

"That's the only time," she went on, reminiscently, "as I was ever a
step-ma to children what wasn't growed up. You'd think a woman as had been
married four times afore would have knowed better 'n to get her fool head
into a noose like that, but there seems to be only one way for folks to
learn things, an' that's by their own experience. If we could only use
other folks' experience, this here world would be heaven in about three
generations, but we're so constituted that we never believe fire 'll burn
till we poke our own fingers into it to see. Other folks' scars don't go
no ways at all toward convincin' us.

"You read lots of novels about the sorrers of step-children, but I ain't
never come up with no epic as yet portrayin' the sufferin's of a step-ma.
If I had a talent like your husband's got, I'll be blest if I wouldn't do
it. What I went through with them children aged me ten years in less 'n
three.

"It was like this," she prattled on. "I'd never seen a one of 'em, they
livin' far away from their pa, as was necessary if their pa was to get any
peace an' happiness out 'n life, an' that lyin' creeter I married told me
there was only three. My dear, there was eight, an' sixteen ordinary young
ones couldn't have been no wors