to be like a little piggy at his trough, do you, my sweet
boy?"

When supper was over, Tilly washed the dishes and Eperson put the
children to bed, removing their moist clothing, bathing their bare,
dusty feet and legs, and putting on their nightgowns. What a holy
service of resignation it was to-night! Why was he so depressed with a
sense of his vast paternal unworthiness? Why, unless he was thinking of
John Trott's success? He told himself that his whole life had been a
failure. Many of his personal debts were unpaid and unpayable. There
were men he dreaded meeting because they always asked for the money due
them, or showed by their faces that they were thinking of his
delinquency. And there were others harder to meet who showed by their
faces and the matters they spoke about that they had no thought of ever
being paid. Ah! then there were still other men--men from whom he could
not bring himself to borrow. They were the few, like Cavanaugh, who
wanted to help him, but did not know how to broach so delicate a subject
with so sensitive a man.

The children tucked away in the general sleeping-room, Eperson went
outside to the chairs that stood by the door-step and sat waiting for
Tilly. Would she come to him as promptly as usual? he wondered, his
stare on the blinking stars beyond the hilltops. Perhaps not so readily,
for an ineffable veil seemed to have been lowered between him and her
since her talk with the neighbors in regard to her first husband's
survival. He listened for the clatter of dishes and pans in the
kitchen. It had ceased. That work was over. Now, nothing would detain
her, he told himself, and he tried to brace his courage for the
performance before him.

But she did not come at once. He heard her voice, with its indescribable
gurgle of maternal sweetness, teaching the children to say their
prayers.

"God bless mother," was repeated after her, "God bless father--God bless
Grandmother Trott, and all the good people in the world. Amen."

"_Grandmother Trott!_" Joel's whole weary being throbbed with the mental
utterance of the words. Then he heard Tilly singing a quaint lullaby
sung by the negroes. He wondered if she were purposely delaying her
usual after-supper chat with him. After all, what was there to tell her?
She had evidently heard the main facts of the matter--that was plain
from that irrepressible elation of hers.

She extinguished the light and came out to him, taking the chair he
stood