fe. Anna first made her
draw close to her own mother; Anna was at once her spur and her reward
during the first hard years at Shotwell Street.

Anna had gone upstairs, and Regina was finishing her breakfast when
Chester came downstairs, followed by the still sleepy yet shining-eyed
Geraldine. Geraldine was to be married in a few weeks now, and had given
up her position in an office, to devote all her time to house-furnishing
and sewing.

"I'm awfully sorry to be so late," smiled Geraldine, "but we talked
until I don't know when last night!" She poured herself a cup of coffee;
the meal went cheerfully on. Presently the bedroom door opened, and a
stout, handsome, middle-aged woman came into the kitchen.

Julia was used, by now, to the transformation that had come to house and
garden, that had affected every member of her mother's family in the
past four years. But to the change in her aunt, Mrs. Torney, she never
became quite accustomed. It had been slow in coming; it had come all at
once. There had been weeks when Julia felt that nothing would ever
silence the whining voice, or make useful the idle hands. There had been
a wretched time when the young woman had warned the older that matters
could not continue as they were. There had been agitated decisions on
Mrs. Torney's part to go away, with Regina, to starve and struggle
again; there had been a scene when Regina coolly refused to leave the
new comforts of Julia's rule.

And then, suddenly, there was a new woman in the family, in Aunt May's
place. Julia always dated the change from a certain Thanksgiving Day,
when Mrs. Torney, who was an excellent cook, had prepared a really fine
dinner. Julia and the girls put the dining-room in order, a wood fire
roared in the air-tight stove, another in the sitting-room grate. Julia
dressed prettily; she put a late rose in her mother's hair, draped the
invalid's prettiest shawl about the thin shoulders, arrayed the toddling
baby in her daintiest finery. She coaxed her aunt to go upstairs to make
herself fresh and neat just before dinner, and during the whole evening
Mrs. Torney's sons and daughters, Julia and Evelyn, Chester and Mrs.
Page and little old Mrs. Cox united to praise the dinner and the cook.

It was as if poor Aunt May had come into her own, had been given at last
the role to which she had always been suited. Handsome in her fresh
shirt waist and black skirt, with her gray hair coiled above a shining
face, she beame