ll friends
she discovered brought Ethel into conversation with the women who had
them in charge. Several of the mothers were French--very French in the
way they dressed, in the way they sewed, in their quick gestures, shrugs
and smiles and their pretty, broken English. They lent a piquant
novelty to motherhood in Ethel's eyes.

At times she thought of Amy. Why had Amy missed all this! How had she
been able to keep away from this adorable child of hers! Ethel saw in
the windows of shops the most tempting garments for small girls. And
Amy had had money to spend! Susette's wardrobe was "simply pathetic!"
And often, sitting in the Park and watching on the road nearby the
endless procession of automobiles and the women like Amy so daintily
clad, and puzzling and remembering innumerable little things from her
first gay month in town--in Ethel's mind the picture of the sister she
had adored began to change a little, and to lose its hold upon her. Amy
beautiful, indolent toward Susette and the household; Amy tense, with a
jealous, vigilant light in her eyes, when it was a matter of Joe and her
love or the money so passionately desired.

But these recollections she would dismiss with excuses for her sister.
"There are two kinds of women," Ethel sagely told herself. "Mothers and
wives. And she was a wife. It may be I'm a mother." And little by
little, in spite of herself, her worship of her sister changed to a
pitying tolerance. The question, "Shall I ever be like that? "--once
so full of eagerness--had already been answered unconsciously. "Poor
Amy, she's dead. She lived her life. I'm going to live another."

Just what life it was to be was as unsettled as before. For as she grew
used to this mothering, the old adventurous hunger for life welled up
again within her. For long periods she forgot the child and sat
frowning into space, her mind groping restlessly for ways and means to
find herself and get friends of her own, independence, work and gaiety,
a chance to grow and "be somebody here!" She had her angry, baffled
moods.

But from these Susette would bring her back. "What's your life to be,
you poor little dear? And if you don't worry, why should I!" And
resolutely she would turn to the small, absorbing life of the child.

This went on for many months. It changed her feeling toward the town,
for now she had a foothold here. It changed her feeling toward Amy,
whose picture had begun to blur. But that queer sensation of i