Indeed, the
room was still a nursery, for the crib that had been in turn Jemima's
and Jacqueline's was drawn up close beside Jacqueline's bed, and
contained the rosy, sleeping Kitty, with a favorite rattle tight clasped
in one pink fist.

"Isn't she too precious, Jemmy?" whispered her foster-mother, who was
leaning over the crib as her sister entered.

Jemima responded without particular enthusiasm--to her small Kitty would
always represent in concrete form the doctrine of Original Sin. She
said, "Come and let me show you how to fix your hair, dear, as they do
it in New York. You're old enough now to wear it up."

"I try to, but it won't stay put, there's such a mop of it!" She
submitted willingly to the other's deft ministrations. "Neither mother
nor I look half as nice since you got married, Jemmy. Oh, I do love your
smooth hands!" She held one affectionately to her cheek. "They're so
nimble and sure of themselves, as if each finger had a little brain of
its own that knew just exactly what it was about."

"I suppose, if one has a brain at all, it's everywhere, in the fingers
as well as the head; just like God in the universe," said the other,
rather absently. "Anyway, if I've got brains, you've got hair, and I
don't know but what that's more important. You'll be a lovely creature
like mother when I'm a weazened little old woman, as bald as a
monkey--or with false things on, like Aunt Jemima. Intellectual hair is
always so thin and brittle."

"Why, Blossom! Yours is just like curly sunlight!"

"Oh, yes, pretty while it lasts," said the other, dispassionately. "But
not vital, like yours and mother's. You're both so splendidly vital.
That's why--Look here, Jacky, Philip's more gone on mother than ever,
isn't he? He just follows her around with his eyes, like that
sentimental hound puppy who is always trying to crawl into her lap--"

"And spilling off," finished Jacqueline, with a chuckle. "I know! If she
says 'good dog' to him, he wags steadily for an hour.--I used to think
you were wrong about it," she added seriously, "and that Phil couldn't
possibly be in love with any one so old as mother; not like men are with
girls, you know. But lately--I'm not so sure."

Poor Jacqueline had learned a good deal lately about the possibilities
of loving.

Jemima commented with satisfaction. "I'm glad _you_ see it, anyway!"

"Of course he has not told me anything, but he--understands so well,"
sighed the other, without ex