sting and deep that housewives buried their brown linens in October,
and found them again, snowy white, on the April grass. Pauline's
mother, dying of "a shock," had been the devoted daughter's charge for
eleven hard years, then Pauline had married at thirty, only to be made
a widow, by a lumber jam, at thirty-two. So it was fortunate that she
could cook, for she was a plain woman, and what the country folk call
"dumb," meaning dull, and unresponsive, and unambitious.

To-night there was a little unusual clutter in the big, hot, clean
kitchen; Lydia was making sandwiches for the Girls' Sodality Christmas
Tree at the large table. Two or three empty cardboard boxes stood
waiting the neatly trimmed and pressed bread: Lydia did this sort of
thing perfectly. At the end of the table, his cheeks glowing, and his
dark mop in a tumble, Teddy was watching in deep fascination.

The room had the charm that use and simplicity lend to any room. There
was nothing superfluous here, and nothing assumed. Martie knew every
crack in the yellow bowl that held a crinkled rice-pudding; the broom
had held that corner for thirty years; for thirty years the roller
towel had dangled from that door. She and Len and Sally had seen their
mother go to the broom for a straw, to test baking cake, a hundred
times; their sticky little faces had been dried a hundred times on the
towel.

But to-night a new, homely sweetness seemed to permeate the place.
Martie had left the slim, dark-blue book upstairs in her bureau drawer,
but her mood of exquisite lightheartedness she had not laid aside. She
sat down in the kitchen rocker, and Teddy climbed into her lap, and,
while she talked with Lydia, distracted her with little kisses, with
small hands squeezing her cold cheeks, and with the casual bumping of
his hard little head against her face.

"I declare it begins to feel Christmassy, Lyd! Did you get down town to
see the stores? I never saw anything like Bonestell's in my life. It's
cold, too--but sort of bracing cold! We had both the stoves going all
day; we had to light the lights at four! It was rather nice, everybody
coming in to say 'Merry Christmas!'"

"The children had their closing exercises at school this morning,"
Lydia contributed, "and afterward Sally and I walked down town, with
all the children. She expects Joe to-morrow. She wanted Billy and Jim
to get in a nap, so I brought Ted home."

"And I took a long nap!" Teddy whispered in his mother'