" she whispered at last, incredulous and bewildered.

"No, dear. Poor Annie----! No, no, no; Norma's mother is dead. But--but
you must believe that Mama is acting as she believes to be for the
best," she interrupted herself, in painful and hesitating tones, "and
that I can't talk about it now, Alice; I can't, indeed! Some day----"

"Mama darling," Alice cried, really alarmed by her leaden colour and
wild eyes, "please--I'll never speak of it again! Why, I know that
everything you do is for us all, darling! Please be happy about it. Come
on, we'll talk of something else. When do you leave for
town--to-morrow?"

"Poole drives us as far as Great Barrington to-morrow, Norma and me,"
the old lady began, gaining calm as she reviewed her plans. Chris needed
her for a little matter of business, and Norma was anxious to see her
Cousin Rose's new baby. The conversation drifted to Leslie's baby, the
idolized Patricia who was now some four months old.

CHAPTER XVIII

Two days later found Norma happily seated beside the big bed she and
Rose had shared less than two years ago, where Rose now lay, with the
snuffling and mouthing baby, rolled deep in flannels, beside her. Rose
had come home to her mother, for the great event, and Mrs. Sheridan was
exulting in the care of them both. Just now she was in the kitchen, and
the two girls were alone together, Norma a little awed and a little
ashamed of the emotion that Rose's pale and rapt and radiant face gave
her; Rose secretly pitying, from her height, the woman who was not yet a
mother.

"And young Mrs. Liggett was terribly disappointed that her baby was a
girl," Rose marvelled. "I didn't care one bit! Only Harry is glad it's a
boy."

"Well, Leslie was sure that hers was going to be a boy," Norma said,
"and I wish you could have heard Aunt Annie deciding that the Melroses
usually had sons----"

"She'll have a boy next," Rose suggested.

Norma glanced at her polished finger-tip, adjusted the woolly tan bag
she carried.

"She says never again!" she remarked, airily. Rose's clear forehead
clouded faintly, and Norma hastened to apologize. "Well, my dear, that's
what she _said_," she remarked, laughingly, with quick fingers on Rose's
hand.

"It's sad that Mrs. Chris Liggett didn't have just one, before her
accident. It would make such a difference in her life," Rose mused, with
her eyes fixed thoughtfully on Norma's face. There was something about
Norma to-day that she d