wistfulness in her eyes.

"Of course I miss the dear children, but I'm so thankful that they are
happy."

"I wish Jenny would come back home to stay with you."

"She would if I asked her, Susan"--her face showed her pleasure at the
thought of Jenny's willingness for the sacrifice--"but I wouldn't have
her do it for the world. She's so different from Lucy, who was quite
happy as long as she could have attention and go to parties. Of course,
it seems to me more natural for a girl to be like that, especially a
Southern girl, but Jenny says that she is obliged to have something to
think about besides men. I wonder what my dear father would have thought
of her?"

"She'll take you by surprise some day, and marry as suddenly as Lucy
did."

"That's what Oliver says, but Miss Priscilla is sure she'll be an old
maid, because she's so fastidious. It's funny how much more women exact
of men now than they used to. Don't you remember what a heroine the
women of Miss Priscilla's generation thought Mrs. Tom Peachey was
because she supported Major Peachey by taking boarders while he just
drank himself into his grave? Well, somebody mentioned that to Jenny the
other day and she said it was 'disgusting.'"

"I always thought so," said Susan, "but, Jinny, I'm more interested in
you than I am in Mrs. Peachey. What are you going to do with yourself?"
Almost unconsciously both had eliminated Oliver as the dominant figure
in Virginia's future.

"I don't know, dear. I wish my children were as young as yours. Bessie
is just six, isn't she?"

"You ought to have had a dozen children. Didn't you realize that Nature
intended you to do it?"

"I know"--a pensive look came into her face--"but we were very poor, and
after the three came so quickly, and the little one that I lost, Oliver
felt that we could not afford to have any others. I've so often thought
that I was never really happy except when I had a baby in my arms."

"It's a devilish trick of Nature's that she makes them stop coming at
the very time that you want them most. Forty-five is not much more than
half a lifetime, Jinny."

"And when one has lived in their children as I have done, of course, one
feels a little bit lost without them. Then, if Oliver were not obliged
to be away so much----"

Her voice broke, and Susan, leaning forward impulsively, put her arms
about her.

"Jinny, darling, I never saw you depressed before."

"I was never like this until to-day. It must be