a herself fixed
all that by the simple process of signing herself Marcia in her twelfth
year and forever after. Marcia was a throw-back to her grandmother
Winter--quick-tongued, restless, volatile. The boy was an admirable
mixture of the best qualities of his father and mother; slow-going, like
Hermie Slocum, but arriving surely at his goal, like his mother. With
something of her driving force mixed with anything his father had of
gentleness. A fine boy, and uninteresting. It was Hannah Winter's boast
that Horace never caused her a moment's sorrow or uneasiness in all his
life; and so Marcia, the troublous, was naturally her pride and idol.

As Hermie's business slid gently downhill Hannah tried with all her
strength to stop it. She had a shrewd latent business sense and this she
vainly tried to instil in her husband. The children, stirring in their
sleep in the bedroom adjoining that of their parents, would realize,
vaguely, that she was urging him to try something to which he was
opposed. They would grunt and whimper a little, and perhaps remonstrate
sleepily at being thus disturbed, and then drop off to sleep again to
the sound of her desperate murmurs. For she was desperate. She was
resolved not to go to her people for help. And it seemed inevitable if
Hermie did not heed her. She saw that he was unsuited for business of
the mercantile sort; urged him to take up the selling of insurance, just
then getting such a strong and wide hold on the country.

In the end he did take it up, and would have made a failure of that,
too, if it had not been for Hannah. It was Hannah who made friends for
him, sought out prospective clients for him, led social conversation
into business channels whenever chance presented itself. She had the boy
and girl to think of and plan for. When Hermie objected to this or that
luxury for them as being stuff and nonsense Hannah would say, not
without a touch of bitterness, "I want them to have every advantage I
can give them. I want them to have all the advantages I never had when I
was young."

"They'll never thank you for it."

"I don't want them to."

Adam and Eve doubtless had the same argument about the bringing up of
Cain and Abel. And Adam probably said, after Cain's shocking crime,
"Well, what did I tell you! Was I right or was I wrong? Who spoiled him
in the first place!"

They had been married seventeen years when Hermie Slocum, fifty-two,
died of pneumonia following a heavy cold.