by seeking what gaiety Carthage afforded. She made no
effort to master the typewriter and she declined to sell dry-goods.

Serina stood and studied the sleeping girl, that strange wild thing she
had borne and had tried in vain to control. She thought how odd it was
that in the mystic transmission of her life she had given all the useful
virtues to Ollie and none of them to Prue. She wondered what she had
been thinking of to make such a mess of motherhood. And what could she
do to correct the oversight? Ollie did not need restraint, and Prue
would not endure it. She stood aloof, afraid to waken the girl to the
miseries of existence in a household where every day was blue Monday
now.

Ollie had not waited to be called. Ollie had risen betimes and done all
the work that could be done, and stood ready to do whatever she could.
Prue was still aloll on a bed of ease. Even to waken her was to waken a
March wind. The moment she was up she would have everybody running
errands for her. She would be lavish in complaint and parsimonious of
help. And yet she was a dear! She did enjoy her morning sleep so well.
It would be a pity to disturb her. The rescuing thought came to Serina
that Prue loved to take a long hot bath on Monday mornings, because on
wash-day there was always a plenty of hot water in the bathroom. On
other mornings the hot-water faucet suffered from a distressing cough
and nothing more.

So she tiptoed out and closed the door softly.

III

At breakfast Ollie waited on the table after compelling Serina to sit
down and eat. There was little to tempt the appetite and no appetite to
be tempted.

Papa was in the doldrums. He had always complained before of having to
gulp his breakfast and hurry to the shop. And now he complained because
there was no hurry; indeed, there was no shop. He must set out at his
time of years, after his life of independent warfare, to ask for
enlistment as a private in some other man's company--in a town where
vacancies rarely occurred and where William Pepperall would not be
welcome.

The whole town was mad at him. He had owed everybody, and then suddenly
he owed nobody. By the presto-change-o of bankruptcy his debts had been
passed from the hat of unpaid bills to the hat of worthless accounts.

Serina was as dismal as any wife is when she is faced with the prospect
of having her man hanging about the house all day. A wife in a man's
office hours is a nuisance, but a man at home in