too busy to
put on a dainty gown in the afternoon, and serve a hospitable cup of
tea on the east porch? Mother was buttering bread for supper, then;
opening little beds and laying out little nightgowns, starting Ted off
for the milk, washing small hands and faces, soothing bumps and
binding cuts, admonishing, praising, directing. Mother was only too
glad to sink wearily into her rocker after dinner, and, after a few
spirited visits to the rampant nursery upstairs, express the hope that
nobody would come in to-night. Gradually the friends dropped away, and
the social life of Weston flowed smoothly on without the Pagets.

But when Margaret began to grow up, she grasped the situation with all
the keenness of a restless and ambitious nature. Weston, detested
Weston, it must apparently be. Very well, she would make the best of
Weston. Margaret called on her mother's old friends; she was tireless
in charming little attentions. Her own first dances had not been
successful; she and Bruce were not good dancers, Margaret had not been
satisfied with her gowns, they both felt out of place. When Julie's
dancing days came along, Margaret saw to it that everything was made
much easier. She planned social evenings at home, and exhausted
herself preparing for them, that Julie might know the "right people."
To her mother all people were alike, if they were kind and not vulgar;
Margaret felt very differently. It was a matter of the greatest
satisfaction to her when Julie blossomed into a fluffy-haired
butterfly, tremendously in demand, in spite of much-cleaned slippers
and often-pressed frocks. Margaret arranged Christmas theatricals, May
picnics, Fourth of July gatherings. She never failed Bruce when this
dearest brother wanted her company; she was, as Mrs. Paget told her
over and over, "the sweetest daughter any woman ever had." But deep in
her heart she knew moods of bitter distaste and restlessness. The
struggle did not seem worth the making; the odds against her seemed
too great.

Still dreaming in the winter dark, she went through the home gate, and
up the porch steps of a roomy, cheap house that had been built in the
era of scalloped and pointed shingles, of colored glass embellishments
around the window-panes, of perforated scroll work and wooden railings
in Grecian designs. A mass of wet over-shoes lay on the porch, and two
or three of the weather-stained porch rockers swayed under the weight
of spread wet raincoats. Two opened