at home he had met with a sort of refusal which stung him to the quick.

Elizabeth rocked the baby with a mechanical dead sort of care. John was
emotional enough to be badly broken up by the child's looks, but
Elizabeth's unresponsiveness at such a time made of it a tragedy which he
could not understand; he wanted greetings and discussion, and attentions
showered upon him as usual, and they were not forthcoming. He could not
understand what had brought this state of things to pass, but no more
could he question one who was so evidently removed from present
conditions. With a sense of forlornness he had never known, he fell on his
knees by her side and laid his head against her arm, seeking comfort, and
when she still did not speak, the fullness of his misery became apparent,
and he got up unsteadily and left the house.

Slowly life and returning interest awakened in the child; still more
slowly did the mother take up her threads in the web of living. The old
routine was established, with a few exceptions. Elizabeth arose early and
prepared breakfast before sunrise as before, the washing and ironing were
as well done, but when she prepared to clean the kitchen floor the first
washday after Aunt Susan's death, she took the mop down from its nail on
the back porch and used it as she had done that first winter.

John and his mother came in with the clothes basket as she started to
wring out the mop to wipe the first corner finished.

"Hadn't I better get down and scrub it for you with the brush?" John
asked.

"There will be no more of that in my kitchen," replied Elizabeth, and she
had quietly continued her work without looking up.

"Why not?" had been the astonished query.

"We will not argue it," she had said in the same spiritless tone in which
she always spoke those days, and had been so quietly determined that she
got her way. John could not argue with a woman who was so unresistant of
manner: to him, manner constituted argument. Elizabeth went her own quiet
way and took no part in the things that went on about her unless her
services were required, then she served faithfully and uncomplainingly,
but she held converse with no one in the happy way of old.

Thus summer passed, and autumn also. Little Jack walked now and was
beginning to lisp an occasional word, making of himself a veritable fairy
in the household. With the close of the warm weather he grew less and less
fretful, and when the first snow fell he bec