as
a big room at the top of the house which Florence McCrea had always
vaguely intended to make into a studio. But, in a paralysis of
indecision as to what sort of studio to make it (book-binding, pottery
and art weaving called her about equally) she had left the thing bare.

Rodney had given Harriet _carte blanche_ to go ahead and fit it up
before he and Rose came back from the seashore, and the layette was a
monument to Harriet's thoroughgoing practicality. There had been a wild
day of supplementing of course, when it was discovered that there were
two babies instead of one.

The room, when they escorted Rose into it, was a terribly impressive
place. The spirit of a barren sterile efficiency brooded everywhere. And
this appearance of barrenness obtained despite the presence of an
enormous number of articles; a pair of scales, a perfect battery of
electric heaters of various sorts; rows of vacuum jars for keeping
things cold or hot; a small sterilizing oven; instruments and appliances
that Rose couldn't guess the uses or the names of. Mrs. Ruston, of
course, was master of them all, and Doris flew about to do her bidding,
under a watchful and slightly suspicious eye. (Doris was the sort of
looking girl who might be suspected of kissing a tiny pink hand when no
one was looking.)

Rose surveyed this scene, just as she would have surveyed a laboratory,
or a factory where they make something complicated, like watches. That's
what it was, really. Those two pink little objects, in their two
severely sanitary baskets, were factory products. At precise and
unalterable intervals, a highly scientific compound of fats and proteids
was put into them. They were inspected, weighed, submitted to a routine
of other processes. And in all the routine, there was nothing that their
mother, now they were fairly born, was wanted for. Indispensable to a
certain point, no doubt. But after that rather the other way about--an
obstacle to the routine instead of a part of it.

Rose kept these ideas to herself and kept her eye on young Doris;
listened to the orders she got; and studied alertly what she did in the
execution of them.

Rodney had a lovely time watching the twins bathed. He stood about in
everybody's way, made what he conceived to be alluring noises, in the
perfectly unsuccessful attempt to attract the infants' attention, and
finally, when the various processes were complete, on schedule, like a
limited train, and the thermometri