lanche Devine.

The Young Wife raised her head. Her eyes were round with fright.

"Going! Oh, please stay! I'm so afraid. Suppose she should take sick
again! That awful--awful breathing--"

"I'll stay if you want me to."

"Oh, please! I'll make up your bed and you can rest--"

"I'm not sleepy. I'm not much of a hand to sleep anyway. I'll sit up
here in the hall, where there's a light. You get to bed. I'll watch and
see that everything's all right. Have you got something I can read out
here--something kind of lively--with a love story in it?"

So the night went by. Snooky slept in her little white bed. The Very
Young Wife half dozed in her bed, so near the little one. In the hall,
her stout figure looming grotesque in wall-shadows, sat Blanche Devine
pretending to read. Now and then she rose and tiptoed into the bedroom
with miraculous quiet, and stooped over the little bed and listened and
looked--and tiptoed away again, satisfied.

The Young Husband came home from his business trip next day with tales
of snowdrifts and stalled engines. Blanche Devine breathed a sigh of
relief when she saw him from her kitchen window. She watched the house
now with a sort of proprietary eye. She wondered about Snooky; but she
knew better than to ask. So she waited. The Young Wife next door had
told her husband all about that awful night--had told him with tears and
sobs. The Very Young Husband had been very, very angry with her--angry
and hurt, he said, and astonished! Snooky could not have been so sick!
Look at her now! As well as ever. And to have called such a woman! Well,
really he did not want to be harsh; but she must understand that she
must never speak to the woman again. Never!

So the next day the Very Young Wife happened to go by with the Young
Husband. Blanche Devine spied them from her sitting-room window, and she
made the excuse of looking in her mailbox in order to go to the door.
She stood in the doorway and the Very Young Wife went by on the arm of
her husband. She went by--rather white-faced--without a look or a word
or a sign!

And then this happened! There came into Blanche Devine's face a look
that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an ugly,
narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and hard. It was
the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she smiled--if having one's lips
curl away from one's teeth can be called smiling.

Two days later there was great news of the white cotta