told, the
correct interpretation of one's own motives being the most complex of
the sciences. It really seemed to him that he felt very ill and he
found a somber satisfaction in reflecting that in the event of his
death, Persis would realize her appalling selfishness. "'Twon't come
much short of murder," he thought with gloomy relish.

Joel's periods of invalidism had been too frequent and prolonged for
this sporadic attack to upset the peaceful order of the household.
Persis attended to his needs with her usual matter-of-fact kindness,
though he suspected that her thoughts were with the new claimants on
her interest and found therein fresh fuel for his grievance. Later
when he called his sister in the feeble voice of the moribund and
learned from Mary that she had gone out to enter the older children in
school, he felt himself a much injured man. But this melancholy
satisfaction was brief, for Persis was back in half an hour, looking in
at his door to ask cheerfully if there was anything he wanted.
"Nothing I'm likely to get," replied Joel and turned his face to the
wall.

Then, too, the house was quiet. Occasionally the baby's fretful voice
reached his ears or Celia's bubbling, irrepressible laughter; but the
tumult on which he had counted confidently as a factor in his
discomfort was lacking. At noon, indeed, the older children came in
with a shout, brimful of communications too important to wait, so that
the three all talked at once, each voice upraised in a laudable
endeavor to drown out the other two. But just as Joel was telling
himself that it was intolerable, enough to drive a man out of his seven
senses, the announcement of dinner produced an agreeable lull in the
uproar. And when the baby was taken upstairs for its nap and Celia
cautioned to discretion, the quiet became even more profound. Joel
found it necessary to prod his sense of grievance to keep it in action.

He had been awake much of the preceding night, brooding upon his
wrongs, and weariness at length asserted itself and he fell asleep. He
woke with a thrilled consciousness of a light touch on his forehead and
for a moment he thought himself a child again, with his mother bending
over him. Demonstrativeness had never been a Dale characteristic.
Indeed the traditions of the community discouraged manifestations of
affection as an indication of weakness, but few mothers as they stand
beside their sleeping children can resist the sweet tem