s' Sinclair.
But you'll feel better if you take a look at this nice boy. I've seen
a good many of 'em first and last, and I told Diantha I'd never set
eyes on a finer baby."

A curious distortion of Annabel's face broke off Persis' eulogy. "Are
you feeling sick, Mis' Sinclair?" she asked in real alarm, thinking
that she would never have given Annabel credit for this excess of
material solicitude.

"Sick? Yes, I'm sick of everything. I'm glad that child's a boy.
Those people that drown the girl babies like kittens, are in the right
of it. No woman ought to live beyond thirty."

"Some of us," remarked Persis, recovering herself with difficulty,
"would have missed a good deal at that rate." But her lips curled
slightly. She was beginning to understand and to acquit herself of
past injustice.

Annabel had reached a point where speech was a necessity. For years,
she had returned Persis' dislike with the added venom of a small
nature. But at this moment, when an outpouring of confidence seemed
essential, she knew there was no one to whom she could speak so freely
as to this woman she had hated.

"Life's cruel, cruel! It promises us women everything. And then it
cheats us and tricks us and takes away all that it gave, one thing
after another. It's like bleeding to death, losing your beauty little
by little, fighting your hardest and knowing you've got to be beaten in
the end. When I was a child in bed I used to think I heard footsteps
coming along the hall, slow and stealthy, and I'd lie there trembling
and quaking, afraid to open my eyes. That's the way I've been
listening to old age, creeping on me--for the last ten years."

"And if only you'd got your courage up to opening your eyes when you
were a little, trembly thing, scared of those footsteps, like enough
all you'd have seen beside your bed was your mother smiling down on
you."

Annabel looked at the speaker without replying. Her look offered
little encouragement for Persis to continue, but she needed no such
incentive.

"You talk about life's being cruel. Why, you poor little soul, you
don't know what life's like. You've never given it a chance. You
haven't played fair."

For years Persis had acknowledged to a desire to give Annabel Sinclair
"a good talking to." On various occasions she had uttered truths that
had cut like knives. She had the same truths to utter now but the
spirit had altered.

"I guess every girl that was ever born