Rotary Club luncheons how they ran barefooted in
November, and made wheat gum--and chewed strings together. They just
like to tell about their chilblains and their stone-bruises."

Her mother looked at her wonderingly: "You think of queer things,
Pearl--I don't know where you get it--I can't make you out--and
there's another thing troubling me, Pearl. You are goin' away--I don't
suppose you will be livin' much at home now. You'll be makin' your own
way."

She paused, and Pearl knew her mother was laboring under heavy
emotion. She knew she was struggling to say what was difficult for her
to get into words.

"When you've been away for a while and then come back to us, maybe
you'll find our ways strange to you, for you're quick in the pick-up,
Pearl, and we're only plain workin' people, and never had a chance at
learnin'. There may come a time when you're far above us, Pearl, and
our ways will seem strange to you. I get worried about it, Pearl, for
I know if that time ever comes, it will worry you too, for you're not
the kind that can hurt your own and not feel it."

Pearl looked at her mother almost with alarm in her face, and the
fears that had been assailing her that her family were beyond the
social pale came back for a moment. But with the fear came a
fierce tenderness for all of them. She saw in a flash of her quick
imagination the tragedy of it from her mother's side, and in her heart
there was just one big, burning, resolute desire, that pain from this
source might never smite her mother's loving heart. The hard hands,
the sunburnt face, the thin hair that she had not taken time to care
for; the hard-working shoulders, slightly stooped; the scrawny neck,
with its tell-tale lines of age; were eloquent in their appeal. Pearl
saw the contrast of her mother's life and what her own promised to
be, and her tender heart responded, and when she spoke, it was in
an altered tone. All the fun had gone from it now, and it was not a
child's voice, nor a girl's voice, but a woman's, with all a woman's
gentleness and understanding that spoke.

"Mother," she said, "I know what is in your heart, and I will tell you
how I feel about it. You're afraid your ways may seem strange to me.
Some of them are strange to me now. I often wonder how any one can be
as unselfish as you are and keep it up day in and day out, working for
other people. Most of us can make a good stab at it, and keep it up
for a day or so, but to hit the steady