red and seven altogether."

"We'll never eat it, Mother."

"You said that last year, and by April my preserve cupboard looked like
Old Mother Hubbard's."

But then, Mrs. Brandeis was famous for her preserves, as Father
Fitzpatrick, and Aloysius, and Doctor Thalmann, and a dozen others could
testify. After the strain and flurry of a busy day at the store there
was something about this homely household rite that brought a certain
sense of rest and peace to Molly Brandeis.

All this moved through Fanny Brandeis's mind as she sat with the
crumpled apron in her lap, her eyes swimming with hot tears. The very
stains that discolored it, the faded blue of the front breadth, the
frayed buttonhole, the little scorched place where she had burned a hole
when trying unwisely to lift a steaming kettle from the stove with the
apron's corner, spoke to her with eloquent lips. That apron had become
a vice with Fanny. She brooded over it as a mother broods over the
shapeless, scuffled bit of leather that was a baby's shoe; as a woman,
widowed, clings to a shabby, frayed old smoking jacket. More than once
she had cried herself to sleep with the apron clasped tightly in her
arms.

She got up from the floor now, with the apron in her hands, and went
down the stairs, opened the door that led to the cellar, walked heavily
down those steps and over to the furnace. She flung open the furnace
door. Red and purple the coal bed gleamed, with little white flame
sprites dancing over it. Fanny stared at it a moment, fascinated. Her
face was set, her eyes brilliant. Suddenly she flung the tightly-rolled
apron into the heart of the gleaming mass. She shut her eyes then.
The fire seemed to hold its breath for a moment. Then, with a gasp, it
sprang upon its food. The bundle stiffened, writhed, crumpled, sank, lay
a blackened heap, was dissolved. The fire bed glowed red and purple as
before, except for a dark spot in its heart. Fanny shivered a little.
She shut the furnace door and went up-stairs again.

"Smells like something burning--cloth, or something," called Annie, from
the kitchen.

"It's only an old apron that was cluttering up my--my bureau drawer."

Thus she successfully demonstrated the first lesson in the cruel and
rigid course of mental training she had mapped out for herself.

Leaving Winnebago was not easy. There is something about a small town
that holds you. Your life is so intimately interwoven with that of your
neighbor. Exist