ock she was usually so sleepy
that she would fall, dead-tired, asleep on the worn leather couch in the
sitting-room. She must have been fearfully exhausted, mind and body. The
house would be very quiet, except for Mattie, perhaps, moving about in
the kitchen or in her corner room upstairs. Sometimes the weary woman
on the couch would start suddenly from her sleep and cry out, choked
and gasping, "No! No! No!" The children would jump, terrified, and come
running to her at first, but later they got used to it, and only looked
up to say, when she asked them, bewildered, what it was that wakened
her, "You had the no-no-nos."

She had never told of the thing that made her start out of her sleep and
cry out like that. Perhaps it was just the protest of the exhausted
body and the overwrought nerves. Usually, after that, she would sit
up, haggardly, and take the hairpins out of her short thick hair, and
announce her intention of going to bed. She always insisted that the
children go too, though they often won an extra half hour by protesting
and teasing. It was a good thing for them, these nine o'clock bed hours,
for it gave them the tonic sleep that their young, high-strung natures
demanded.

"Come, children," she would say, yawning.

"Oh, mother, please just let me finish this chapter!"

"How much?"

"Just this little bit. See? Just this."

"Well, just that, then," for Mrs. Brandeis was a reasonable woman, and
she had the book-lover's knowledge of the fascination of the unfinished
chapter.

Fanny and Theodore were not always honest about the bargain. They would
gallop, hot-cheeked, through the allotted chapter. Mrs. Brandeis would
have fallen into a doze, perhaps. And the two conspirators would read
on, turning the leaves softly and swiftly, gulping the pages, cramming
them down in an orgy of mental bolting, like naughty children stuffing
cake when their mother's back is turned. But the very concentration of
their dread of waking her often brought about the feared result. Mrs.
Brandeis would start up rather wildly, look about her, and see the two
buried, red-cheeked and eager, in their books.

"Fanny! Theodore! Come now! Not another minute!"

Fanny, shameless little glutton, would try it again. "Just to the end of
this chapter! Just this weenty bit!"

"Fiddlesticks! You've read four chapters since I spoke to you the last
time. Come now!"

Molly Brandeis would see to the doors, and the windows, and the clock,
an