she misunderstood.

[Illustration: Tailpiece to _The Mother_]

[Illustration: Headpiece to _Nearing the Sea_]

_NEARING THE SEA_

It was Sunday evening. Evil-weather threatened. The broad window of
top floor rear looked out upon a lowering sky--everywhere gray and
thick: turning black beyond the distant hills. An hour ago the
Department wagon had rattled away with the body of Mr. Poddle; and with
the cheerfully blasphemous directions, the tramp of feet, the jocular
comment, as the box was carried down the narrow stair, the last
distraction had departed. The boy's mother was left undisturbed to
prepare for the crucial moments in the park.

She was now nervously engaged before her looking-glass. All the tools
of her trade lay at hand. A momentous problem confronted her. The
child must be won back. He must be convinced of her worth. Therefore
she must be beautiful. He thought her pretty. She would be pretty.
But how impress him? By what appeal? The pathetic? the tenderly
winsome? the gay? She would be gay. Marvellous lies occurred to
her--a multitude of them: there was no end to her fertility in
deception. And she would excite his jealousy. Upon that feeling she
would play. She would blow hot; she would blow cold. She would reduce
him to agony--the most poignant agony he had ever suffered. Then she
would win him.

To this end, acting according to the enlightenment of her kind, she
plied her pencil and puffs; and when, at last, she stood before the
mirror, new gowned, beautiful after the conventions of her kind, blind
to the ghastliness of it, ignorant of the secret of her strength, she
had a triumphant consciousness of power.

"He'll love me," she thought, with a snap of the teeth. "He's got to!"

Jim Millette knocked--and pushed the door ajar, and diffidently
intruded his head.

"Hello, Jim!" she cried. "Come in!"

The man would not enter. "I can't, Millie," he faltered. "I just got
a minute."

"Oh, come on in!" said she, contemptuously. "Come in and tell me about
it. What did you do it for, Jim? You got good and even, didn't you?
Eh, Jim?" she taunted. "You got even!"

"It wasn't that, Millie," he protested.

"Oh, wasn't it?" she shrilled.

"No, it wasn't, Millie. I didn't have no grudge against you."

"Then what was it? Come in and tell me!" she laughed. "You dassn't,
Jim! You're afraid! come in," she flashed, "and I'll make you lick my
shoes! And whe