and hold the hand
he isn't using. You don't need both hands to write a sermon!"

Kate laughed at the picture, looking at her daughter with a fond
maternal eye. She could understand that the girl might be somewhat
distracting, in her demure little house-dress turned in at the soft
throat, and her hair done neatly on top of her head as became a matron,
but escaping about her face in glinting chestnut tendrils.

"I suspect it _is_ rather difficult to be a spiritual pastor and master
and an attentive bridegroom at the same time," she commented.

She put the infrequency of Philip's appearances at Storm down to the
same cause. "Young birds to their own nest," she thought, a little
drearily. It is a rule that is rather hard on older birds.

But Jacqueline, her eyes already opened by Jemima, was more observant,
and began to realize at last that Philip was trying to avoid her mother.

The thought troubled and frightened her. What had she done? They were
her entire world now, Philip and her mother; and any world of
Jacqueline's must necessarily be a world of much loving-kindness.

She consulted her sister, distressfully.

"Humph!" said Jemima, and would have liked to add, "I told you so!"--but
did not dare.

Thoughts, however, have an annoying way of communicating themselves
independent of words, and Jacqueline nodded sadly, as though she had
spoken.

"I know. I oughtn't to have married Philip--you were right. I only
wanted to make him happier, and I thought he could go on adoring mother
just the same, with me to comfort him in between whiles. But he won't
let me,--he won't let me! And he's unhappier than ever.--Oh, Jemmy, what
shall I do?"

Jemima for once was at a loss for advice to offer. She thought harsh
things of her headstrong, single-minded mother, and yearned over this
poor, ignorant, immolated young creature who seemed destined to waste
her loveliness on those who could not value it.

"There's nothing to do," she sighed; adding with a cynicism of which she
was not aware, "Except to wait for mother to grow old. It won't be long
now. She _can't_ go on looking like a girl forever!"

"Oh, Jemmy!" exclaimed Jacqueline, shocked and flushing. "Philip's
not--that sort!"

"Every man's that sort," remarked the experienced Mrs. Thorpe.

CHAPTER XLIII

As the winter closed in--it was one of the open, keen, out-of-door
winters which have done their share to make the dwellers on the great
central plateau of