oving
heart of a woman. A little secret society of her erstwhile school
friends presented her with a luncheon set; the Keller twins with a
silver gravy boat; and Jeanette Peopping Truman, who occupied an
apartment in the same building, spent as many as three afternoons a week
with her, helping to piece out a really lovely tulip-design quilt of
pink and white sateen.

"Jeanette," said Ann Elizabeth, one afternoon as the two of them sat in
a frothy litter of the pink and white scraps, "how did you feel that
time when you had the nerv--the breakdown?"

Jeanette, pretty after a high-cheek-boned fashion and her still bright
hair worn coronet fashion about her head, bit off a thread with sharp
white teeth, only too eager to reminisce her ills.

"I was just about gone, that's what I was. Let anybody so much as look
at me twice and, pop! I'd want to cry about it."

"And?"

"For six weeks I didn't even have enough interest to ask after Truman,
who was courting me then. Oh, it was no fun, I can tell you, that
nervous breakdown of mine!"

"What--else?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"Did it--was it--was it ever hard to swallow, Jeanette?"

"To swallow?"

"Yes. I mean--did you ever dream or--think--or feel so frightened you
couldn't swallow?"

"I felt lots of ways, but that wasn't one of them. Swallow! Who ever
heard of not swallowing?"

"But didn't you ever dream, Jeanette--terrible things--such terrible
things--and get to thinking and couldn't stop yourself? Silly,
ghostly--things."

Jeanette put down her sewing.

"Ann, are you quizzing me about--your mother?"

"My mother? Why my mother? Jeanette, what do you mean? Why do you ask me
a thing like that? What has my mother got to do with it? Jeanette!"

Conscious that she had erred, Jeanette veered carefully back.

"Why, nothing, only I remember mamma telling me when I was just a kiddie
how your mamma used to--to imagine all sorts of things just to pass the
time away while she embroidered the loveliest pieces. You're like her,
mamma used to say--a handy little body. Poor mamma, to think she had to
be taken before Truman, junior, was born! Ah me!"

That evening, before Fred came for his two hours with her in the little
parlor, Ann, rid of her checked apron and her crisp pink frock saved
from the grease of frying sparks, flew in from a ring at the doorbell
with a good-sized special-delivery box from a silversmith, untying it
with eager, fumbling fingers, her father la