usk below she heard the tapping of a
blind beggar's stick on the pavement, and the sound made, while it
lasted, a plaintive accompaniment to the lullaby she was singing. "Two
whole weeks," she thought, while her longing reached out to that unknown
room in which she pictured Oliver sitting alone. "Two whole weeks. How
hard it will be for him." In her guarded ignorance of the world she
could not imagine that Oliver was suffering less from this enforced
absence from all he loved than she herself would have suffered had she
been in his place. Of course, men were different from women--that
ancient dogma was embodied in the leading clause of her creed of life;
but she had always understood that this difference vanished in some
miraculous way after marriage. She knew that Oliver had to work, of
course--how otherwise could he support his family?--but the idea that
his work might ever usurp the place in his heart that belonged to her
and the children would have been utterly incomprehensible to her had she
ever thought of it. Jealousy was an alien weed, which could not take
root in the benign soil of her nature.

For a week there was no letter from Oliver, and at the end of that time
a few lines scrawled on a sheet of hotel paper explained that he spent
every minute of his time at the theatre.

"Poor fellow, it's dreadfully hard on him, isn't it?" Virginia said to
her mother, when she showed her the imposing picture of the hotel at the
head of his letter.

There was no hint of compassion for herself in her voice. Her pity was
entirely for Oliver, constrained to be away for two whole weeks from his
children, who grew more interesting and delightful every day that they
lived. "Harry has gone into the first reader," she added, turning from
the storeroom shelves on which she was laying strips of white oilcloth.
"He will be able to read his lesson to Oliver when he comes home."

"I have always understood that your father could read his Bible at the
age of four," remarked Mrs. Pendleton, who passionately treasured this
solitary proof of the rector's brilliancy.

"I am afraid Harry is backward. He hates his letters--especially the
letter A--so much that it takes me an hour sometimes to get him to say
it after me. My only comfort is that Oliver says he couldn't read a line
until he was over seven years old. Would you scallop this oilcloth,
mother, or leave it plain?"

"I always scallop mine. Mrs. Treadwell must be better, Jinny; Su