ey and
Geraldine fell upon the breakfast dishes, and Julia went upstairs. She
found the little Anna dreaming by a sunny window, one stocking on, one
leg still bare, and her little petticoat hanging unbuttoned.

"Come, Infant, this won't do!" Julia's practised hands made quick work
of the small girl's dressing. A stiff blue gingham garment went on over
Anna's head, the tumbled curls were subjugated by a blue ribbon. When it
was left to Anna merely to lace her shoes, Julia began to go about the
room, humming as she busied herself with bureau and bed. She presently
paused at the mirror to pin on a wide hat, and her eye fell upon the
oval-framed picture of Jim that she had carried away with her from the
Pacific Avenue house. It had been taken by some clever amateur; had
always been a favourite with her. She studied it dispassionately for a
moment.

Jim had been taken in tennis clothes; his racket was still in his hand,
his thin shirt opened to show the splendid line of throat and chin. His
thick hair was rumpled, the sunlight struck across his smiling face.
Julia's memory could supply the twinkle in his eye; she could hear him
call to Alan Gregory: "For the Lord's sake, cut this short, Greg! It's
roasting out here!"

Beside this picture hung another, smaller, and also a snapshot. This was
of a man, too, a tall, thin, ungainly man, sitting on a roadside rock,
with a battered old hat in his hand. Behind him rose a sharp spur of
rough mountainside, and so sharply did the ground fall away at his feet
that far below him was a glimpse of the level surface of the Pacific.
Julia smiled at this picture, and the picture smiled back.

"Come, Mouse!" said she, rousing herself from a reverie a moment later.
"Get on your hat! You and I have to go to market!"

The morning wore on; it was like a thousand other happy mornings. Julia
and Anna loitered in the cool odorous fish stalls at the market,
welcomed asparagus back to its place in the pleasant cycle of the year's
events, inspected glowing oranges and damp crisp heads of lettuce;
stopped at the hardware store for Aunt May's new meat chopper, stopped
at the stationer's for Anna's St. Nicholas, stopped at the florist's to
breathe deep breaths of the damp fragrant air, and to get some
buttercups for Grandma.

Julia's mother was in the kitchen when she and Anna got home, her dark
hair still damp from brushing, her thin wrists no whiter than her snowy
ruffles. Presently they all moved