th their important little goings and comings. She sewed
on buttons and made puddings for Jim, she went for aimless walks,
pushing Jinny before her in the go-cart, and guiding the chattering
Diego with her free hand. She paused long in the market, uncomfortably
undecided between the expensive steak Jim liked so much, and the
sausages that meant financial balm to her own harassed soul. She
commenced letters to her mother that drifted about half-written until
Jinny captured and destroyed them. She sewed up rents in cloth lions
and elephants, and turned page after page of the children's cloth
books. Same and eventless, the months went by,--it was March, and the
last of the rains,--it was July, and she and Jim were taking the
children off for long Sundays in Sausalito, or on the Piedmont
hills,--it was October, with the usual letter from Mother about
Thanksgiving,--it was Christmas-time again! The seasons raced through
their familiar surprises, and were gone. Anne had a desperate sense of
wanting to halt them; just to think, just to realize what life meant,
and what she could do to make it nearer her dreams.

So the first five years of their marriage slipped by, but toward the
end with a perceptible brightening of the prospect in every direction.
Not in one day, nor in one week, did the change come; it was just that
things went well for Jim at the office, that the children were daily
growing less helpless and more enchanting, that Anne was beginning to
take an interest in the theatre again, and was charming in a new suit
and a really extravagant hat. The Warriners began to spend their Sunday
afternoons with real estate agents in Berkeley--not this year, perhaps,
but certainly next, they told each other, they could CONSIDER that
lovely one, with the two baths, and such a view, or the smaller one,
nearer the station, don't you remember, Jim? where there was a
sleeping-porch, and the garden all laid out? They would bring the
children up in the open air and sunshine, and find neighbors, and
strike roots, in the lovely college town.

Then suddenly, there were hard times again. Anne's health became poor,
she was fitful and depressed, quite unlike her usual sunshiny self.
Sometimes Jim found her in tears,--"It's nothing, dearest! Only I'm so
MISERABLE all the time!" Sometimes she--Anne, the hopeful!--was filled
with forebodings for herself and the child that was to come. No
unnecessary expense could be incurred now, with this fres