rying babies. She suddenly knew sickness and helplessness
to be two of the greatest factors in human life.

"What if Heaven is only this earth, clean and right at last," mused
Julia, "and Hell only the realization of what we might have done, and
didn't do--for each other!" And to Jim she said, smiling, "This
experience has not only given me a baby, and given me my own motherhood,
but it seems to have given me all the mothers and the babies in the
world as well! I wish you were a baby doctor, Jim--the preservation of
babies is the most important thing in the world!"

Slowly the kindly tides brought her back to life, and against her own
belief that it would ever be so, she found herself walking again,
essaying the stairs, taking her place at the table. Miss Wheaton went
away, the capable Caroline took her place, and Julia was well.

Caroline was a silent, nice-looking, efficient woman of forty. She knew
everything there was to know about babies, and had more than one book to
consult when she forgot anything. She had been married, and had two
handsome sturdy little girls of her own, so that little Anna's rashes
and colics, her crying days and the days in which she seemed to Julia
alarmingly good, presented no problems to Caroline. There was nothing
Julia could tell her about sterilizing, or talcum powder, or keeping
light out of the baby's eyes, or turning her over in her crib from time
to time so that she shouldn't develop one-sidedly.

More than this, Anna was a good baby; she seemed to have something of
her mother's silent sweetness. She ran through her limited repertory of
eating, sleeping, bathing, and blinking at her friends with absolute
regularity.

"I'd just like you to leave the door open so that if she _should_ cry at
night--" Julia said.

"But she never _does_ cry at night!" Caroline smiled.

Julia persisted for some time that she wanted to bathe the baby every
day, but before Anna was two months old she had to give up the idea. It
became too difficult to do what nobody in the house wanted her to do,
and what Caroline was only too anxious to perform in her stead. Jim
liked to loiter over his breakfast, and showed a certain impatience when
Julia became restive.

"What is it, dear? What's Lizzie say? Caroline wants you?"

"It's just that--it's ten o'clock, Jim, and Caroline sent down to know
if I am going to give Anna her bath this morning!"

"Oh, bath--nothing! Let Caroline wait--what's the rush?"