French was to be allowed to stay only as long as Rose wanted her;
only for the few days--or hours--she would need for making herself
mistress of their regime. Then the nurse was to be sent away on a
vacation and Rose should have her children to herself.

She didn't go to Boston with Rodney to meet them; nor even to the
station; stayed in the cottage, ostensibly to see to it, up to the very
last minute, that the fires were right (June had come in cold and rainy)
and in general to be ready on the moment to produce anything that their
rather unforeseeable needs might call for. Her real reason was a
shrinking from having her first meeting with them in the confusion of
arrival on a station platform, under the eyes of the world, amid the
distractions of things like luggage.

Rodney understood this well enough, and arriving at the cottage, he
clambered out of the wagon with them and carried them both straight in
to Rose, leaving the nurse and the bewildering paraphernalia of travel
for a second trip.

Rose, in the passionate surge of gratified desire that came with the
sight of them, caught them from him, crushed them up tight against her
breast--and frightened them half to death. So that without
dissimulation, they howled and brought Miss French flying to the rescue.

Rose didn't make a tragedy of it; managed a smile at herself, though she
suspected she'd cry when she got the chance, and subjected her ideas to
an instantaneous revision. They were--_persons_, those two funnily
indignant little mites, with their own ideas, their own preferences, and
the perfectly adequate conviction of being entitled to them. How would
she herself have liked it, to have a total stranger, fifteen feet high
or so, snatch at her like that?

She was rather apologetic all day, and got her reward; especially from
the boy, who was an adventurous and rather truculent baby, much she
fancied, as his father must once have been, and who took to her more
quickly than the girl did. Indeed, the second Rodney fell in love with
her almost as promptly as his father had done before him. But little
Portia wasn't very far behind. Two days sufficed for the conquest of
the pair of them.

The really disquieting discovery awaited the time when the wire-edge of
novelty about this adventure in motherhood had worn off; when she could
bathe them, dress them, feed them their very strictly regimented meals,
without being spurred to the highest pitch of alertness by th