ensation of heart failure, she can not keep them.
I got a letter this morning, and wired for them to start immediately and
I just got an answer that they will be here to-morrow afternoon. Then I
sent for the decorators."

"You aren't any mother for small children," protested Eveley, with an
argumentative wave of her hand. "You are born for business. Everybody
says so. You do not know anything about babies."

"Oh, yes I do," cried Eileen ecstatically. "They have fat legs and
dimples, and Betty sucks her thumb and has to be scolded, and Billy
shouts 'More jam' and smudges it on his knees."

"Are you giving up your position?"

"Oh, mercy, no. We have to live. Poor Jim only left them insurance and
nothing else, and that did not last very long. I sent the other aunt a
small check every month to help along and sort of heap coals of fire on
her head at the same time. No, I shall have to work harder than ever now.
But I get one seventy-five a month now,--and lots of families live on
less."

"Who will keep house then--Betty?"

"Don't ask silly questions, Eveley, I am so nervous anyhow I hardly know
what I am saying. You remember my laundress, don't you? She is so nice
and motherly and a Methodist and respectable and all that,--only old and
hard up. She is coming to live with us,--she will have the den for her
room, and is closing her cottage. She is to keep house and look after the
babies while I am at work. She only charges twenty-five a month, so I can
manage. The rent does seem high, fifty dollars,--but we need the room,
though you all thought it was so extravagant for me to have such a large
apartment to myself. But you know how I am, Eveley,--I like lots of
space,--a place for everything, and everything where it belongs. So I was
willing to stand the expense, and now it is a good thing I did. Come and
see the baby room."

Eveley duly admired the blue Red-Riding-Hoods and Jacks-and-Jills,
exclaimed over the tiny white beds, and tiny white tables and chairs, and
then said:

"You seem to be enjoying this experience, so I suppose you do not feel it
is your duty, nor anything sordid like that?"

"Oh, no," laughed Eileen. "I am doing it because I am just crazy about
those babies, and I am sort of lonely, Eveley, though I have never
realized it before. And when I think of coming home to a frolic with fat
little babies in white dresses and blue ribbons,--well, I am so happy I
could fairly cry."

So Eveley put her arms