ining of her extravagance, perhaps, to some woman he had known
in his youth? She laughed a little, to herself, there in the dark.

"What in the world are you giggling about, Mother?" called Marcia, who
slept in the bedroom near by. Hannah occupied the davenport couch in the
sitting room. There had been some argument about that. But Hannah had
said she preferred it; and the boy and girl finally ceased to object.
Horace in the back bedroom, Marcia in the front bedroom, Hannah in the
sitting room. She made many mistakes like that. So, then, "What in the
world are you giggling about, Mother?"

"Only a game," answered Hannah, "that some people were playing to-day."

"A new game?"

"Oh, my, no!" said Hannah, and laughed again. "It's old as the world."

Hannah was forty-seven when Marcia married. Marcia married well. Not
brilliantly, of course, but well. Edward was with the firm of Gaige &
Hoe, Importers. He had stock in the company and an excellent salary,
with prospects. With Horace away at the engineering school Hannah's
achievement of Marcia's trousseau was an almost superhuman feat. But it
was a trousseau complete. As they selected the monogrammed linens, the
hand-made lingerie, the satin-covered down quilts, the smart frocks,
Hannah thought, quite without bitterness, of the wine-coloured silk.
Marcia was married in white. She was blonde, with a fine fair skin, in
her father's likeness, and she made a picture-book bride. She and Ed
took a nice little six-room apartment on Hyde Park Boulevard, near the
Park and the lake. There was some talk of Hannah's coming to live with
them but she soon put that right.

"No," she had said, at once. "None of that. No flat was ever built that
was big enough for two families."

"But you're not a family, Mother. You're us."

Hannah, though, was wiser than that.

She went up to Madison for Horace's commencement. He was very proud of
his youthful looking, well-dressed, intelligent mother. He introduced
her, with pride, to the fellows. But there was more than pride in his
tone when he brought up Louise. Hannah knew then, at once. Horace had
said that he would start to pay back his mother for his university
training with the money earned from his very first job. But now he and
Hannah had a talk. Hannah hid her own pangs--quite natural pangs of
jealousy and something very like resentment.

"There aren't many Louises," said Hannah. "And waiting doesn't do,
somehow. You're an early marr