PART I

AN IDYLL—FROM THE INSIDE

I

"Tell Letty, Muvver. Tell Letty."

"Again? Oh, Letty!" Catherine opened her eyes. Letty, on her stomach, was pointing at a black ant slipping along a grass blade.

"'Nother ant. Tell Letty."

"Don't squirm off the rug, or the ant will crawl up your rompers and take a nip." Catherine looked up through the motionless leaves of the birch trees under which she had spread the rug. "Once there was a busy ant," she began, "and he went out for a walk to find a grain of sand to build his house. His brother went out for a walk, too——" Her thoughts drifted through the story: how close the sky looks, as if the heat had changed its shape, and it rested there just above the tree—— "The busy ant found a grain of sand and ran back to his hill to lay it on his house." The haze seems thicker; the forest fires must be worse, no rain forever——

"Uh-h," Letty grunted, and held up her small brown hand, the ant a black smear on her palm.

"Why, Letty!" Catherine pulled herself up on one elbow. "You squashed him!"

"Bad ant. Nip Letty."

Catherine reached for Letty's fist just as a pink tongue touched it.

"Going to eat him, are you? Little anteater." She brushed the ant away and rolled her daughter over into her arm. "You might wait until you are nipped."

Letty chuckled and lay quietly for a minute, while Catherine looked at her. Brown legs and arms, yellow rompers, yellow hair with sun streaks of palest gold, blue eyes squinted in mirth, a round and sturdy chin.

Catherine closed her eyes again. Out from the woods behind them came with the lengthening shadows the odor of sun-warmed firs and dried needles. Quiet—release from heat—from thought.

Suddenly Letty squirmed, pounded her heels vigorously against her mother's knee, rolled over, and began her own method of standing up. Her process consisted of a slow elevation of her rear, until she had made a rounded pyramid of herself. She stood thus, looking gravely around, her hands flat on the rug, her sandaled feet wide apart.

"Hurry up, anteater," jeered Catherine. "You'll have vertigo."

But Letty took her time. Finally erect, she started off across the meadow.

"Here, you!" Catherine sat up. "Where you going?"

"Get Daddy." Letty's voice, surprisingly deep, bounced behind her.

"Wait for me." Catherine stretched to her feet, reluctantly.

Letty would not have waited, except that she stumbled into an ant hill hidden in the long grass, and went down plump on her stomach. So she lay there calmly, turning her head turtle-wise to watch her mother.

Catherine had borne three children without adding a touch of the matron to her slender, long body. In knickers and green smock, her smooth brown hair dragging its heavy coil low down her slim neck, she looked young and strong and like the birch tree under which she stood. There was even the same suggestion of quiet which a breath might dispel, of poise which might at a moment tremble into agitation. The suggestion lay in her long gray eyes, with eagerness half veiled by thin lids and dark lashes, or perhaps in the long, straight lips, too firmly closed.

A shout came up the path between the alders, and Letty scrambled to her feet.

"Daddy!" she shrieked, and headed down the path, Catherine loping easily after her.

There they were, Charles and the two older children, Spencer carrying a string of flounders, Marian with the fish lines hugged under her arm, and Charles between them, each of his hands caught in one of theirs. They stopped as Letty pelted toward them.

"Fishy! Sweet fishy!" Letty reached for the string. Spencer drew it sternly away, and Letty reached again, patting the flat cold flounder on the end.

"Letty, you'll get all dirty and fish smelly." Spencer disapproved.

"Sweet fishy—" Letty's howl broke off as her father swung her up to his shoulder.

"Fine supper we got, Mother," said Charles, grinning.

"And I caught two," cried Spencer, "and Marian caught one——"

"It was bigger'n yours," said Marian, sadly, "if it was just one."

"Well, but Marian hollered so when a fish picked at her line and so she scared him off."

Marian peered up under her shock of dark bobbed hair, and finding a twinkle in Catherine's eyes, giggled.

"I did holler," she said. "I like to holler, and fish haven't any ears and couldn't hear me——"

"This being the ninth time this discussion has been carried on," said Charles, "I move we change the subject. Anything will do——"

Spencer sighed. The procession moved up the lane, Father at the head, with Letty making loud "Glumph! Glumphs!" as his rubber boots talked, Spencer next, trying to space his smaller boots just in his father's footsteps, and Marian with Catherine at the rear.

"Who's going to clean those fish?" Catherine wrinkled her nose.

"Well, we caught them. Division of labor, eh, Spencer?"

"The male has the sport, and the female the disgusting task of removing the vitals, I suppose."

"Amelia won't," announced Marian. "She said she couldn't clean fish, it turned her stomach."

"I wouldn't keep a maid that wouldn't clean fish." Charles dropped Letty on the broad granite step of the farmhouse, and settled beside her. "Who'll get me some shoes?" He hauled at his red rubber boot, and the clam mud flew off in a shower.

Letty grabbed again at the string of fish as Spencer stood incautiously near her.

"Take them into the sink, Spen," said Catherine. "Marian, can you find Daddy's sneakers? You'll all need a scrub, I'll say."

She looked at them a moment. Marian, dark; irregular small features, tanned to an olive brown; slim as witch grass. Spencer, stocky, with fair cropped head and long gray eyes like her own. Charles—he looked heavier, and certainly well; the sun had left a white streak under the brim of his battered hat and behind his spectacles, but the rest of his face was fiery.

"Cold cream for you, old man," she said. "You aren't used to our Maine sun and sea burn."

"I think I'll be a captain," said Spencer, seriously, turning from his opening of the door. "And fight. Like father." He gazed admiringly at the old service hat on the step.

Catherine's mouth shut grimly and her lids drooped over her eyes.

"Plan some other career, my son. Your father didn't fight, anyway. Did he say he did?"

"Now, Catherine, I just told them about the camp at Brest."

Catherine looked at her husband, a long, quiet glance. Then she followed Spencer into the kitchen.

"Oh, 'Melia!" The heat from the stove rushed at her. "You built a fire to-night!"

"Yes, I did." Amelia, a small, wiry, faded Maine woman, turned from the table. "That oil stove's acting queer, and anyways, it don't seem as if you could fry fish on it."

"We might eat them raw, then, instead of sweltering." Catherine pushed her sleeves above her elbows, and reached for a knife.

"Now that's a real pretty ketch, ain't it?" Amelia nodded at Spencer, who watched while the flounders were slipped from the cord into the sink.

Catherine cleaned the fish. She left Amelia to fry them while she set the table. The heat from the kitchen crept into the long, low dining room. Then Catherine drew Letty, protesting shrilly, into the bedroom, where she undressed and bathed her. When she had slipped the nightie over the small yellow head, she kissed her. "Now you find Daddy, and I'll have Amelia bring your milk out to the porch."

She called Marian, who came on a run, peeling her jumper over her head.

"Can I put on my white sailor suit to show Daddy, Muvver?" She dragged it from the clothes-press. "Oooh! That's cold water!" She wriggled under Catherine's swift fingers.

"There, little eel." Catherine knotted the blue tie. "Run along. Where's Spencer?"

"He's washing hisself, I think." Marian smoothed up her blue sock with a little preening motion, and vanished.

"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's thin call, and Catherine went back to the kitchen.

Letty was in bed on the porch, her smeary white duck sitting on the pillow beside her, her deep little voice running on in an unintelligible story of the day.

"Supper ready, Catherine?" Father stood in the doorway of the dining room, Marian and Spencer at his heels. "We fishermen are starved. Oh, you aren't dressed yet."

"I'm as dressed as I shall be." Catherine pushed her hair back from a moist forehead. "Let's eat."

"Well, we like to see you dressed up like a lady once a day, don't we?" Charles grinned at her as he pulled up his chair.

Catherine felt her hands twitch in her lap. "Steady," she warned herself. "He's just joking. I've been busy—I should have dressed this afternoon——"

"Some flounder!" Charles bit into the golden brown fish. "What you been doing all the time, Catherine, while we went provender hunting?"

"Thinking," said Catherine slowly. "That is, I thought in between Letty's demands for more story."

"What did you think about, Mother?" Spencer's face lighted with quick curiosity.

"Some about you, Spencer, and some about Marian and Letty, and some about Daddy, and mostly about—me." Catherine was serving the salad. She had deft, slim hands with long fingers, and her movements were slow and beautifully exact.

"What about us?" asked Marian.

"I have to think some more, first." Catherine looked up at Charles. "A lot more."

II

The house was a gray mass in the evening, with one pale yellow window where the kitchen lamp shone. Catherine lay motionless in the wicker lounge on the low front veranda. Amelia had gone home. Spencer and Marian were asleep. Charles had gone to the village store for tobacco. Down below the house the smoke and heat mist veiled the transparency of the sea. So still was the night that Catherine heard the faint "mrrr" of wings of a huge gray moth that flew against her cheek and then away.

"Queer," she thought. "If the house were empty, it would have many sounds, rustles and squeaks and stirrings. But because children sleep there, it is quiet. As if the old ghosts and spirits stood on tiptoe, peeking at the intruders."

She stretched lazily, and relaxed again. The loudest sound in the night was her own soft breathing. Then, faintly, the gravel in the path slipped. Charles was coming back.

Catherine dropped her feet over the edge of the couch and clasped her arms about her knees. When he comes, she thought, I will tell him. If I go on thinking in the dark, I'll fly to bits.

She could see him, darker than the bushes, moving toward her. Then she could smell his pipe.

"Hello!" she called softly, and he crossed the grass to the steps.

"Say, what a night! And what a place!" He slapped his hat beside him, and sat down at Catherine's feet, backed against the pillar. "It's been fierce in town to-day, I'll bet. You're lucky to be able to stay here." He puffed, and the smoke moved in a cloud about the indistinct outline of his face. "Wish I could!"

"When are you going?"

"To-morrow night." Charles sounded aggrieved. "I wrote you I had just the week-end."

"I hoped you might manage a little longer——"

"Can't manage that conference on Monday without being there."

"What conference is that?" Catherine swung one knee over the other; as she watched the face there in the dark, she could feel its expression, although the features were so vague.

"The committee on psychological work in the schools. You remember? Planning it all through the East. It's a big thing."

"Oh, that new committee." Catherine was apathetic.

"That woman I spoke of, Stella Partridge, is mighty keen. She's working out an organization scheme that beats any plan I've seen. I tell you what, old girl, it's great to see the world wake up and swing around to asking for what you want to give it!" Charles cuffed at her foot. "Remember that first year down here? With Spencer a baby, and buying this old house a tremendous undertaking, and me writing a book that I didn't dare hope would sell? Things are different now, aren't they?"

"They are different." Catherine's voice hardened subtly. "I helped with that book, didn't I?"

"Jove! I should say you did. All that typing, and correcting, and then the proof reading."

"And now——" Catherine hesitated.

"Well, now my work has broadened out so much, and there are the three children. I can afford to hire the typing done now, eh what?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter with you, Catherine? You've had a kind of chip about you somewhere ever since I came this time. I can't help it if I can't spend all my time playing in the country with you and the children, can I? After all, I have to see to my work, and it's increasingly demanding."

"I haven't any chip on my shoulder, Charles?" Catherine caught her breath. "I do want to talk to you."

"Fire ahead." Charles tapped out the ashes from his pipe and reached up for her hand. "What's eating you?"

"Oh, Charles!" Catherine's slender fingers shut inside his warm palm. "Help me out! You ought to understand." Her laugh shivered off abruptly. "You know I'm proud of you, just puffed up. Do you know I'm jealous, too? Jealous as—as nettles!"

"Huh? Jealous? What about? Come down here, where I can hug you."

"No. I don't want to be loved. I want to talk. I'm not jealous about your love. I guess you love me, when you think of it——"

"Now, Cathy, you aren't turning into a foolish woman."

"I'm turning into something awful! That's why I've got to do something. It's your work, I'm jealous of."

"Why, my work doesn't touch my feeling about you."

"That's not what I mean. I mean I'm proud of you, every one is, and you aren't proud of me. No one is. No one could be. I'm——"

"Why, Cathy! I am! You're a wonder with the children. And the way you've stood back of me. What are you talking about?"

"I don't want to get emotional. I want to make you see what I've been thinking about. All the nights this summer while I've sat here at the end of the day. I've tried to think—my mind is coated with fat, my thoughts creak. Charles"—her voice trembled—"can you imagine yourself in my place, all summer, or all last year, or the year before? Planning meals or clothes—instead of conferences? Telling stories to Letty. Holding yourself down on the level of children, to meet them, or answer them, or understand them, until you scarcely have a grown-up thought? Before Letty was born, and the year after, of course I wasn't very well. That makes a difference. But now I am. What am I going to do? Could you stand it?"

"But, Catherine, a man——"

"If you tell me a man is different, I'll stop talking!" Catherine cried out.

"I was going to make a scientific statement." Charles stopped, the tolerant good nature of his voice touching Catherine like salt in a cut finger. "To the effect," he went on, "that usually a man's ego is stronger, and a woman's maternal instinct drowns her ego, so that she can live in a situation which would be intolerable to a man."

"Well, then, I'm egoistic to the root." Catherine jerked her hand away from his grasp. "At any rate, the situation is intolerable."

"Poor old girl!" Charles patted her knee. "The summer has been dull, hasn't it?"

"It's not just that. Do you know, I was almost happier while you were in France and I was working—than I am now!"

"Didn't care if I did get hit by a shell, eh? Didn't miss me at all?"

"I did, and you know it." Catherine was silent, her eyes straining toward him in the darkness.

"That was part of the war excitement, wasn't it?"

"No. But something happened in me when you told me you were going. I had been living just in you, you and the two children. I thought that was all I ever wanted. And I thought you felt toward me the same way. Then—you could throw it over—because you wanted something else."

"Catherine, we've had that out dozens of times. You know it was a chance for the experience of a lifetime, psychological work in those hospitals. And then—well, I had to get in it."

"I know. I didn't say a word, did I? But I went to work and I liked it. Then you came back——"

"Well?" His word hung tenderly between them.

"Yes." Catherine sighed. "Like falling in love again, wasn't it? Only deeper. And we wanted Letty." Her voice quavered again. "That's it! I love you so much. But you don't sit down in your love—and devour it—and let it devour you. It isn't right, Charles, help me! I"—she laughed faintly—"I'm like your shell-shocked soldiers. You couldn't really cure them until peace came. Then they weren't shell-shocked any more. I'm shell-shocked too, and I can't cure myself, and I see no armistice. I'm growing worse. I know why women have hysterics and all sorts of silly diseases. I'll have 'em too in a day or so!"

"Funny, isn't it, when I'd like nothing better than a chance to loaf here with the kids. But you'll get back to town soon and see people, theaters, club——"

"And hear about the whooping cough the Thomases had—and—oh, damn!" Catherine was crying suddenly, broken, stifled sobs.

Charles pulled her down into his arms, holding her firmly against his chest.

"There, old girl! Stop it! What do you want?"

Catherine pushed herself away from him, her hands braced against him.

"I won't be silly." She flung her hand across her eyes. "I'm sorry. But I've tried to figure it out, and I just drop into a great black gulf, and drown!"

"What are you figuring on?" Charles let his fingers travel slowly along the curve of her cheek until they shut softly about her throat.

Catherine held herself sternly away from the comfort of touch.

"I can't endure it, day after day, the same things. Petty manual jobs. And I'm older every day. And soon the children will be grown up, and I'll be flat on the dump heap."

"In a few more years, Cathy, I'll have more money. Now you know we can't afford more servants, I'm sorry."

"I don't want more from you!" Catherine cried out. "I want to do something myself!"

"You know how much you do." Charles scoffed at her, but she caught the hint of scratched pride in his voice. "In the middle-class family the wife is the largest economic factor."

"Charles, if I work out a scheme which puts no more burden on you"—Catherine's breath quickened—"would you mind my going back to work? I've figured it out. How much I'd have to earn to fill my place——"

"You mean—take a job?"

"Yes."

Charles reached for his pipe.

"What would you do about the children?" He cleared his throat. "They seem to need a mother."

"Well, they need a father, too, but not to be a door-mat."

"Everything I think of saying, Catherine, sounds awfully mid-Victorian."

"I know what it all is! You needn't think I don't. But I know the answer to it all, too, so you needn't bother saying it."

"I suppose I better consider myself lucky you aren't expecting me to stay home and take care of Letty. You aren't, are you?"

Catherine laughed. She knew Charles wanted to laugh; he was tired of this serious talk.

"You won't mind, then?" she added, tensely. "You see, if you aren't willing, and interested, I can't do it."

"Try it. Go ahead. I'll bet you'll get sick of it soon enough. After all, you women forget the nuisance of being tied to appointments, rain or shine, toothache or stomachache——"

"Ah-h"—Catherine relaxed in his arms, one hand moving up around his neck. "It has seemed so awful, so serious, thinking it out alone. You are an old dear!"

"All right. Have it your own way." Charles struck his match and held it above the pipe bowl. The light showed his eyes a little amused, a little tender, a little skeptical. It flared out, leaving dancing triangles of orange in the darkness. Catherine shivered. Was he just humoring her, like a child? Not really caring? But she shut her eyes upon the mocking flecks of light and slipped off to the step below him, her head comfortably against his arm.

She was tired, as if she had cut through ropes which had held her erect and taut. She could feel the slight movement of muscles in the arm under her cheek, as Charles sucked away at his pipe. The soft darkness seemed to move up close and sweet about them, with faint rustles in the grass at her feet. Queer that just loving couldn't be enough, when it had such sweetness. Her thoughts drifted off in a warm, tranquil flood of emotion; her self was gone, washed out in this nearness, this quiet. Charles stirred, and unconsciously she waited for a sign from him out of the perfect, enclosed moment.

He spoke.

"I want you to meet Miss Partridge when you come back to town. Great head she's got. We're using her plan of organization in the small towns."

Catherine sat very still. After an instant she lifted her head from his shoulder and yawned audibly.

"I'm sleepy. The day has been so warm," she said, and rose. She kicked against something metallic and stooped to pick up Letty's red pail and shovel, as she passed into the house.

III

"Dark o' the moon! Dark o' the moon! Dark—Mother, see what I found!" Spencer broke his slow chant with a squeal, and dangled above his head the great purple starfish. Sure-footed, like a lithe brown sea animal, he darted over the slippery golden seaweed toward Catherine, who looked up from the shallow green pool over which she had been stooping.

"Lemme see too!" Marian's dark head rose from behind a rock and she stumbled after her brother. Plump! she was down in the treacherous kelp, her serious face scarcely disconcerted. Marian always slipped on the seaweed.

"Isn't he 'normous? He's the 'normousest yet." Spencer laid the star on the rock, bending over to straighten one of the curling arms.

"I found one almost as big," declared Marian, "only pink. And pink's a nicer color. Isn't it, Muvver?"

"If you like it." Catherine took Spencer's sea-chilled fingers in hers and drew them down to the under side of the ledge over the pool. "Feel that?"

"What is it?" Spencer's gray eyes darkened with excitement.

"Lemme feel too!" Marian sat down on the seaweed and slid along to the ledge. "Where?"

Catherine guided her fingers. How like sea things those cold little hands felt! "What does it feel like?"

"Kinda soft and kinda hard and——Oh, it's got a mouth!" Marian squirmed away. "Tell us, Muvver! What is it?"

"Can you guess, Spen?"

"May I look, Mother? I think it's—snail eggs."

Catherine laughed.

"Lean over and look. I'll hold you." She seized his belt, while he craned his neck over the bit of rock.

"Purple, too!" He came back, flushed. "I know!"

"Lemme see!" Marian plunged downward, her legs waving. "It's full of holes. What is it?"

"Sponges," said Spencer, importantly.

"Sponges is brown and bigger," cried Marian.

"These are alive and not the same kind as your bath sponge."

Catherine straightened her back and looked out over the sea. Opal, immobile, so clear that the flat pink ledges beyond the lowest tide mark were like blocks of pigment in the water. Something strange in this dark of the moon tide, dragging the water away from hidden places, uncovering secret pools. Once every summer Catherine rowed across to the small rocky point that marked the entrance to the cove, to see what the tide disclosed. There was a thrill about the hour when the water seemed to hang motionless, below the denuded rocks. Spencer felt it; Catherine had touched the sensitive vibration of his fingers as he searched. Marian found the expedition interesting, like clam digging! Catherine remembered the year the fog had come in as the tide swung back, suddenly terrifyingly thick and gray about them, so that she had wondered whether they ever would find their own mooring; she could see the ghostly shore, with unfamiliar rocks looming darkly out of the grayness, as she rowed slowly around the cove, trying to keep the shore line as guide. Charles had come out to meet them; his "Hullo!" had been a whisper first, moving through the mist and seeming to recede. Then he had come alongside them, the fog drops thick on his worried face. Spencer had liked that, too, although Marian had crouched on her bow seat, shivering.

No fog to-day. The horizon line was pale and clear. She should go back for Letty. They had left her behind them on a sandy stretch of beach, with a pile of whitened sea-urchin shells.

"Mother!" Spencer repeated his summons. "What is dark o' the moon?"

Catherine explained vaguely as they scrambled up the rounded, slippery rocks to the patch of coarse grass at the top of the small point. Where was Letty? She had been visible from there. Catherine began to run, down to the muddy flats that separated the point from the mainland. Only a few minutes since she had last seen her head, like a bit of bright seaweed. The water was so far out, surely—— Panic nipped at her heels as she flew. "Letty! Let-ty!" There was the pile of shells. "Letty!" A spasm of fear choked her breathing. Then a call, deep and contented.

"Letty here." Around the clump of beach peas and driftwood— The yellow head nodded out of a mud hole left by a clam digger on the beach. "Letty swim."

Catherine picked up her daughter.

"Letty, darling! You little imp——" The gray mud dripped from rompers and sandals.

"Oh, she's all wet." Marian puffed up. "And dirty!"

"Now how are we going to get you home without a cold, young woman!" Catherine stood her on the beach, and sighed. Letty, her fingers full of the soft mud, looked up with bright, unremorseful eyes.

"My sweater's in the dory, Mother." Spencer frowned at his sister. "You haven't any sense, Letty."

Letty's rompers served as a bath towel, and the sweater made a cocoon. She sat beside Marian, while Catherine and Spencer rowed the old dory across the half mile of quiet water. The children chattered about their discoveries, and Catherine listened while her thoughts moved quickly beneath the surface of the talk. Fear like that—it's terrific, unreasoning, overwhelming. How would you bear it if anything happened! You have to be all eyes, and be with them every instant. How can you plan, thinking of anything else? And yet, things happen to children, of any mothers——

"Dark o' the moon—pulls the ole water—away from the earth——" Spencer chanted as he rowed. "Dark o' the moon——"

"What makes you say that all the time, Spencer?" demanded Marian.

"I like to say it. Pulls the ole water—away from the earth——"

"Not so deep, Spencer. You drag your oar. See—" Catherine pulled the blades smoothly along, just beneath the surface.

"I know. I meant to." Spencer was intent on his oars again.

IV

The mail bag hung on the post. Catherine drew out its contents. A letter from Charles. The paper. Her fingers gripped over an envelope. From the Bureau, in answer to hers. A piece of fate, in that square white thing. She thrust it into her pocket. Later, when the children were asleep. She could think then.

Now the air was full of the children. Letty's deep squeals of mirth, a strange noise from Spencer, meant to be whinnying, as he pranced up the path dragging Letty's cart, protests from Marian, "You are silly, I think!" Would Marian always be so serious? And Spencer—he was always exhausting himself by the very exuberance of his fancy. Catherine followed them slowly. Suddenly the sounds broke off for an instant of surprised silence; Catherine lifted her head. The children were out of sight around the bend, and she could not see the house yet. Other voices, and a shriek from Letty. She hurried past the alder growth. There was a car by the side door, and people. Marian flew toward her.

"Muvver! Mr. Bill and Dr. Henrietta! They've come to see us!"

"Good gracious! What can I feed them?" thought Catherine. Then, as she came nearer and saw them, she thought, "I'm getting to be the meanest kind of domestic animal."

Dr. Henrietta Gilbert, fair, plump, serene, immaculately tailored, looked up from her seat on the step, one arm around Letty, who was gleaming brown and sleek from the carelessly draped red sweater. Spencer hovered at her shoulder, his face lighted with pleasure.

"Hello, Catherine!" she held up one hand.

William Gilbert stood behind them, his dark, tired face smiling a little, his long, lean body sagging lazily. Catherine reached for his hand.

"Well, you two!" she cried. "How'd you find this place?"

"Charles gave us minute directions." Dr. Henrietta rose neatly. "He wouldn't come. He's too important for trips. What's happened to Letty? She seems to be clothed for a prize fight."

"Letty swim!" shouted Letty proudly.

"You drove from New York?" Catherine lifted Letty into her arms, and enveloped her in the sweater. "I didn't know you could get away."

"Labor Day," said Bill. He was gazing at the children, his eyes half shut behind his thick glasses.

"If you can't put us up, Catherine, we'll hunt for a boarding house. But we wanted to see you."

"Of course I can. Do you think I'd let you escape, when I'm starving for human beings?"

"With all of these?" Bill nodded at the group.

"They are animals, not human beings, aren't you, Marian?" Dr. Henrietta laughed at Marian's distressed face. "Your woman in the kitchen"—she dropped her voice mysteriously—"thought we were bandits and didn't ask us in."

Amelia was pleased to meet them, when Catherine ushered them properly into the house.

"Don't that beat all!" she said, loudly, as they followed Spencer to the guest room. "I thought they was peddlars. Drove all the ways from New York! Don't that beat all!" She made flurried rushes about the kitchen, pulling open the cupboard doors. "Now don't you fuss, Mis' Hammond. If baked beans is good enough I can make out a meal, I guess. She's a doctor, eh?"

After a fleet half hour Catherine had Letty bathed, fed, and tucked into her cot. She had slipped out of her knickerbockers and smock into a soft green dress. No time to brush her hair; she adjusted a pin in the heavy brown knot, and glanced at her reflection. Letty's voice rose in deep inarticulate demand from the porch. Catherine stepped to the door. Bill stood outside.

"She wants you to say good night to Ducky Wobbles." Catherine smiled at him; she had, at times, a lovely smile, unreserved in its warm friendliness. She was fond of Bill; his dark silence piqued her, but she felt that it was a silence of steady, quiet wisdom, which couldn't break itself up into tiny words.

"Can't I say good night to Letty instead?"

"No! Nice Ducky!" Letty wobbled her duck at him. "Goo'ni' to my Ducky!"

"Well, then, good night to Ducky and to his Letty."

Letty dropped back into her pillow, content.

"Now you go to sleep, old lady." Catherine closed the door, and stopped for a moment to supervise Marian's preparations.

Spencer had filled the wood basket with shining pink-white birch logs. Catherine drew out the crane with the kettle and laid a fire on the andirons in the huge old fireplace. Dr. Henrietta came out, dangling her eyeglasses on a long black ribbon over her sturdy white finger.

"This is a charming old place, Catherine. You all look well, too. A summer in the country certainly sets the children up."

Catherine glanced at her, as the flame crept around the logs.

"You ought to try it, if you want to know what it does to you—" she paused. "Moss in every cranny of your brain—" Bill was coming in. "After supper I'll tell you!"

Supper was over. Spencer had piloted Bill and the car safely into the barn, running back to tell Catherine, "Moth-er! Mr. Bill thinks his car scared all the old cow ghosts in the stalls." When he and Marian were in bed, Catherine came back to the living room, the square envelope from the Bureau in her hand.

"It's queer you two should come to-night," she said. "I need you to talk to."

Bill had settled in the old fiddle-back walnut chair, the smoke from his pipe turning his lined face into a dim gargoyle. Dr. Henrietta was fitting a cigarette into her long amber holder.

"Charles hasn't been here much this summer, has he?" she asked.

"Only occasional week-ends." Catherine sat down on the footstool on the hearth. The light shone through the loosened brown hair about her face and turned her throat to pale ivory. "He was here a week ago."

"Your sister? Has she been here?"

"No. She decided to spend her vacation in the mountains with that friend of hers. Nobody's been here! I haven't seen anyone since last May, except for flying shots at Charles. If I begin to spout a Mother Goose rhyme at you, you might understand why."

"Well, you haven't the mossy look I connect with mothers," said Henrietta, as she smoked in quick little spurts. "Have a cigarette?" She tossed her silver case into Catherine's lap.

"Sworn off." Catherine ran her finger over the monogram. "Amelia would know I was a fallen woman—haven't lighted one since—oh, since Charles came back from France."

"Didn't he care for those home fires?" Bill took his pipe out of his teeth, drawled his question, and went on with his inspection of the flames.

Catherine laughed.

"Tell me what you two have been doing since I saw you."

Henrietta retrieved her case and extracted a second cigarette.

"Same things. Babies, clinics, babies. Bill's had a bridge over in Jersey. The Journal's taken a series of articles I did on that gland work last year. Public school on the East Side is going to let me run sort of a laboratory clinic on malnutrition. Mother instinct down there feeds its infants on cabbage, fried cakes, and boiled tea."

"You're a wonder, Henry." Catherine sighed. "Putting over what you want."

"It's only these last few years, you know, that I've had any recognition."

"You're a wonder, just the same. Isn't she, Bill?"

"Um." Bill's grunt gave complete assent.

Catherine looked steadily at her friend. Even in the soft firelight Dr. Henrietta Gilbert retained her smooth, competent neatness. A smoothness like porcelain, thought Catherine. Porcelain with warmth in it, she added hastily to herself, as if she had made an unfair accusation. Firm, kindly lips; contented, straightforward blue eyes; plump, ungraceful body; Dr. Henrietta had a compact, assured personality, matter of fact, intelligent, enduring. Catherine wondered: do I give, as she looks at me, as complete an impression of me? I feel hidden away. Then she thought, quickly, of the grim days when Spencer lay so piteously still except when he struggled for breath, when he had so nearly died—pneumonia—and Henrietta had seemed to hold herself between the child and death itself, calm, untroubled. She was a wonder!

"You couldn't have done it, could you," she said suddenly, "if you had had children?" Then she stopped, aghast at her heedlessness. She had never said that when Bill was there to hear her. But Henrietta's response was cheerful and prompt.

"Certainly not. That's why we haven't any."

Catherine glanced shyly toward Bill. His eyes, inscrutable as ever, did not lift from the fire.

"That's"—Catherine hesitated—"that's what I want to talk about."

"What?" Henrietta was on her guard.

"Oh, I don't mean you. I mean me?" She balanced the letter on her knee and pointed at it. "That letter. I haven't opened it, but it's an omen."

"Don't be mysterious," Henrietta jibed at her.

"I want to go to work. I wrote to the Bureau, where I had that job while Charles was in France. This is their answer."

Bill leaned forward to tap his pipe out on the fire tongs. Catherine felt his eyes on her face.

"Catherine! Bully for you!" Henrietta clapped her hand on Catherine's shoulder. "Have you told Charles? Can you manage it?"

"I told him." Catherine drank eagerly of the bluff encouragement in Henrietta's voice. "He calls it my 'unsatisfied trend.' But he wouldn't object, of course."

"I thought you didn't care much for that work. Statistics, wasn't it?" Bill put his question quietly.

"Part of it I didn't." Catherine admitted that reluctantly. "But a new investigation is being started, on teaching. I am interested in that. I taught, you know, before I married, and I think that is as important as anything in the world."

"Read the letter, woman!" Henrietta shook Catherine's shoulder.

Catherine ran her finger under the flap and unfolded the square page. As she bent near the firelight, a log rolled off the burning pile, sending a yellow flame high into the chimney, touching into relief the wistful, tremulous lines of her mouth.

"They want me." Her voice was hushed, as she looked up at Henrietta. "At once. Dr. Roberts says he had been looking for someone. He thought I was unavailable."

A shrill, frightened cry darted into the room, sharp as a flame. Catherine leaped to her feet.

"Spencer. He has nightmares." She went hastily out to the sleeping porch.

He was moaning in his sleep, one hand brushing frantically over his blanket. Catherine's hand closed over his. "There, Spencer," she said, softly, "it's all right, dear." He did not wake, but the moaning dropped into regular, quiet breathing, and his hand relaxed warmly in hers. She stood a moment, listening. Then she stole to the other two beds, bending over each. Letty's breathing was so soft that her heart stood still an instant as she listened. At the door of the porch she clasped her hands over her breast.

"Am I wicked?" she thought. "When I have them—to care about—" A passion of tenderness for them shook her; she felt as if the three of them lay at the very core of her being, and she enclosed them, crouching above them, fiercely maternal.

Slowly she went back to the living room. She heard Bill's low voice, and then Henrietta's,

"Catherine can do it. She has brains and strength——"

Her entrance broke off the sentence.

"I'll light a lamp," she said briefly. "This firelight's too sentimental. I want hard common sense."

"Here, let me." Bill flicked a match with his thumb nail, and Catherine fitted the heavy orange globe down over the lamp.

She seated herself in the straight chair near the desk.

"Well," said Henrietta, "I don't see any more clearly than I did in the dark. If you have the nerve to try this, Catherine, go ahead. I'm all for you."

"You think, professionally, that it won't harm the children?"

"You can hire some woman, can't you, to take your place as slave? I suppose you still can look at them occasionally."

"Yes. I suppose"—Catherine twisted her fingers together—"I suppose I am as conceited as most mothers, wondering whether they can get along eight hours a day without me."

"You aren't happy, are you?" Henrietta flung at her, abruptly. "You have the blues, black as ink. You have to hang on to yourself about trifles. You——"

"Oh, yes, yes!" Catherine's laugh shrilled a little. "Don't go on with my disgraceful disposition. I admit it. But don't women have to put up with that?"

"My Lord, no. No longer than they are willing to. Most of them find it easier to lie down. You've got too much brains to be sentimental, Catherine Hammond."

"What do you think, Bill?" Catherine appealed to him suddenly. She felt him, in his motionless silence, probing, inspecting, and never saying what he saw.

"It is for you to decide," he answered.

"You know you can't get advice out of Bill! It's a wonder he ever can serve on an engineering commission." Henrietta laughed at him, in friendly, appreciative amusement. "He has to offer technical advice there. He won't give any other kind."

"You won't consider my specifications?" Catherine was a trifle piteous, under her light tone. "Even if I need—well, it is rebuilding, isn't it?" She wondered why his opinion seemed so necessary. She had Henrietta's, and Henrietta was a woman. But she wanted to reach across, to pull at those passive, restrained hands, to beg him to speak.

"I really think that you have to decide yourself." He paused. "You realize, probably, that it will be like handling a double job. Charles would find it difficult to take over a new share of your present job. Most men would."

"I don't want him to. I couldn't bear to do the slightest thing to interfere with him. His career is just starting—and brilliantly. It wouldn't be right to bother him."

"Why not?" Henrietta sat up, hostility bristling in her manner. "Why not a fair sharing of this responsibility? He wanted the children, didn't he? You're as bad as some of my clinic mothers. They go out to work by the day, and they come home to work by the night. I asked one of them why she didn't let her man help with the dishes and the wash, and she said, 'Him? He's too tired after supper.' And she was earning more scrubbing than the man!"

"You wouldn't make Bill sit up with your patients, would you?" cried Catherine, hotly, "or typewrite your articles?"

"Of course Henrietta has only one job," said Bill.

"Charles has expected the children to be my job." Catherine spoke slowly. "He is in competition with other men whose wives have no other thought. Like Mrs. Thomas, for instance. You met her?"

"I've met scores of them. Most of them haven't brains enough to think with," said Henrietta, crisply. "You have. That's the trouble with you. Now think straight about this, too."

"I am trying to." Catherine's cry hung in the pleasant room, a sharp note of distress.

"It is true, as Catherine sees"—Bill leaned forward—"that the average man grows best in nurture furnished by the old pattern of wife. But you can't generalize. This is Catherine's own problem." He rose. "I wish you luck, you know. Good night." He went slowly across the hall, and closed the door of the guest room.

"You can't drag Bill into an argument," said Henrietta. "Now he's gone." She pulled her chair around to face Catherine. "I want to see you make a go of this. To see if it can be done. It's got to be, some day. I wouldn't take the chance, you see."

"But it was children I most wanted." Catherine groped among her familiar thoughts. "I didn't know I wouldn't be contented. I'm not sure I shouldn't be."

"You aren't. The signs are on you, plain as day. And you've hit straight at the roots of your trouble. I've seen it, longer than you have, and I've just been waiting. When Charles went off for his adventure, he left you space to see in!"

"Are you—happy?"

"Me? Of course. Reasonably."

"You don't want any children?"

"Good heavens, no! I see enough of children."

"But you like them. You couldn't handle them as you do——"

"I take out my well-known maternal instinct that way, if you like."

"You're hard as nails, Henry."

"Catherine"—Henrietta's face was grim under its fair placidity—"when I was sixteen, I saw my mother die in childbirth. She had eight children. Two of them are alive now. She was only thirty-three when she died. She died on a farm in Michigan, and my father thought she picked a poor time, because he was haying. I swore then I'd be something besides a female animal. William knew what I wanted. It's a fair deal to him. He knew he was getting a wife, but not a mother. That's all there is to that. I like you. When you fell for Charles so hard, I was afraid you were ended. Now I have hopes!" Her hand, firm and hard, shut about Catherine's. "Only, don't handicap yourself with this clutter of feelings."

Something in the clutch of the firm fingers gave Catherine a quick insight. Henrietta wasn't hard! Not porcelain. A shell, over a warm, soft creature—a barnacle, hiding from injury as deep as that her childhood had shown her.

"You're a nice old thing." Catherine laid her other hand over Henrietta's. "And"—she came back to her own maelstrom—"you think it will be fair to the children? I ought to be more decent—better for them—if I can get some self-respect."

"That's talking. You write and take that job, instanter! I'll look around for a woman for you. When can you come down?" Henrietta withdrew her hand.

"That's another thing." Catherine frowned. "Dr. Roberts says as soon as possible. School doesn't open, though, for two weeks. I don't like to drag the children back."

"You see?" Henrietta made an impatient lunge with her foot.

"I'll have to think that out."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Henrietta rose.

"I'm glad we blew in," she said. "But we have to start off early."

"You've helped." Catherine stood in front of her friend, her hands clasped loosely. "I'll hunt you up in town, when I need an injection of common sense."

She went through the quiet house, setting the screen in front of the crimson ash of the fire, turning down the lamp, hanging away the red sweater Letty had worn home, placing a row of damp little sandals on the kitchen steps where the morning sun would dry them. She stood there for a moment, looking off across the water. A huge crimson star hung low in the east; she thought she caught a flicker of reflection in the dark stretch of water. Perhaps it was only a late firefly.

For hours she lay awake, staring out at the great birch tree, watching the faint motion of its leaves, and the slipping through them of the Big Dipper as it wheeled slowly down its arc.

V

They all stood in the sunshine in front of the house, watching the tan top of the Gilberts' car disappear into the alders.

Spencer sighed ostentatiously.

"Wisht we had a nottomobul," he said. "Mr. Bill let me help him squirt oil and I filled a grease cup and put it back."

"Should say you did!" scoffed Marian. "Look at your sleeve! You're awful dirty."

"Aw, shut up," growled Spencer.

"Shut up! Shut up!" shrieked Letty, dancing on her toes, and pulling at Catherine's hand. "Shut up!"

Catherine, who had been caught in a tight knot of confused thought by Henrietta's final mockery, "You won't come down for weeks, I know. And here's your job, waiting for you! You can't break through!" came back with a little start.

Spencer was staring dolefully down the lane; Marian hovered at his smeared elbow, ready to taunt him again if he stayed silent; Letty pranced as if she wanted to say, "Sic 'em!"

Catherine smiled. She knew how they felt. The arrival of the Gilberts was a large stone dropped into the smooth evenness of their days. Their departure—she couldn't carry on that figure, but she knew the emptiness it left, a funny little sickish feeling, almost a fear lest the days would stay empty.

"Well, isn't he a dirty pig, Muvver?"

"You hush up!" Spencer flushed as Catherine's grave eyes rested on his.

"Amelia says she wants some peas picked. The basket is in the woodshed."

"I picked 'em last," said Marian.

"You never did!" Spencer's anger bubbled up. "You——"

"And some potatoes," continued Catherine, calmly. "If you aren't too cantankerous, Spencer might dig those, and Marian might pick the peas."

Spencer dug his toe into the turf.

"Letty dig!" Letty pulled at Catherine's hand, her lower lip piteously imploring. "Letty dig, Muddie!"

"I have some letters to write." Catherine picked up Letty and started for the house. "I hope you two can see to the vegetables."

With a brief glance as she opened the door, she saw Spencer with a gruff "Aw, come along!" heading for the woodshed.

Letty twisted and squirmed in her arms. "Dig!" she declared.

"You can dig in your sand pile." Catherine set her down. "Where is your red pail? You find that, while I find my pen."

She couldn't go back to town before school opened. Her pen made tiny involved triangles at the edge of the blotter. Charles wouldn't like it if she brought the children down so early. Still, that would give her a few days to set the house in order, to find a woman to take her place. What a queer thought! Henrietta had one in mind, she had said, a sort of practical nurse and housekeeper. There were the children's clothes to see to. When could she do that? She wouldn't have time for sewing. She dropped her head down on the table, her hands clasped under her forehead. I can't do it, she thought. Too many things. Things! That's it. Clothes, and laundry, and dirt in the corners. One hand groped out for the letter from Dr. Roberts, and she lifted her head. Her mouth set in a hard, thin line; the smears under her gray eyes made them larger, weary with a kind of desperation.

"I remember so well your admirable work," he had written. "I can think of no one with whom I should prefer to entrust this new piece of work."

If I don't do it now, I never will, she thought. Never. Perhaps I haven't the courage, or the endurance.

"Mis' Hammond!" came Amelia's nasal call. "D'you want a fish? Earle's here and wants to know."

"Yes." Catherine drew her paper near.

"Huh? D'you want one?"

Catherine rose abruptly and hurried into the kitchen.

"Buy one, Amelia," she said. "Good morning, Earle."

"Well, he's got cod and haddock and hake." Amelia was stern.

"Haddock," said Catherine. "There's change there in my purse."

When she came back to the porch, Letty was not in sight, nor did she answer Catherine's call. Her red pail lay beside the sand pile.

"Oh, damn!" thought Catherine, as she flung her pen on to the table and started in quest of Letty. "If I don't find her, I'll regret it. Letty! Mother wants you!"

Incredible that those small legs could travel so fast. Catherine peeked into the poultry yard. Last week she had found Letty there, trying to catch an indignant rooster. But Letty seldom repeated.

As she rounded the corner of the house, she saw the child, and her own heart contracted terribly. Letty was lying on her stomach on a broad stone, part of the well curb, her small yellow head out of sight, her heels in the air.

"Who left that cover off! If I call her, I may startle her——"

Amelia appeared at the door, a water pail in her hand, her pale eyes popping out in her tight face.

"Sh-h!" Catherine laid a finger on her lips, as she stole softly toward Letty, with knees that trembled. Her hand closed firmly over a kicking foot, and she dragged the child suddenly back. Then she sat down on the grass.

Letty wriggled violently to be free.

"Letty fish!" she waved a bit of string. "Fish!"

"Well, don't that beat all!" Amelia stood over them. "Who left that well cover off?"

"You didn't?" asked Catherine wearily.

"My land, no. I was just coming out to draw a bucket. I'll bet that Earle done it."

"Letty, be still!" Catherine's tone hushed the child. "I have told you never to go near that well, haven't I?"

Letty smiled, beguilingly.

"Pretty Muddie. Letty fish." Her small face wrinkled into the most ingratiating smile she possessed.

"You are a naughty Letty." Catherine rose. "Come along and be tied up, like a bad little dog."

Letty's wrinkled nose smoothed instantly, and her eyes closed for a scream. Catherine lifted her firmly into her arms, one hand over the open mouth.

She sat in her room, waiting for Letty's shrieks to subside. They did, soon, and she heard her chirrup. "Get ap! Get ap!" and knew the rope which tied her had become a horse.

Fiercely she seized her pen and wrote. If she stopped to think again— Anything might happen, anyway! She stopped long enough to see clearly that if anything happened while she, the mother, was away, she might have a load of self-reproach heavier than she could endure. It's part of the struggle, she thought. Someone else can play watchdog, surely. There! She had committed herself. A note to Charles. She was glad his conference had been so interesting. She had just accepted a position at the Bureau, like her old job there. She might come down a few days early. With love——

VI

The porter dropped the bags on the platform beside them, and held out his pink palm. Then he swung up to the step, as the long train began to move. Until the train was out of sight down the curving track, Catherine knew it was useless to start her procession. A fine drizzle filled the air under the shed, and the roofs of the street below them gleamed dull and sordid.

"Spencer, will you take that bag? And Marian, this one——" Catherine pulled Letty up into her arm and with a suitcase dragging at her shoulder, piloted the children toward the stairs. "Daddy may be downstairs. Careful, Marian, on those wet steps."

There he was, at the bottom of the narrow, dark stairs. Catherine's heart gave its customary little jump—always, when she saw Charles again, even after the briefest separation.

Marian clung to his arm, Spencer let himself be hugged, Letty squealed with delight. Catherine looked at him, her eyes bright. He did look well! And he had a new suit, in all this rain!

"Here's a taxi, right here. Jump in. Where are your checks?" he bundled them in and handed the checks to the driver.

"This is a crowded street, Mother, and awful loud!" said Spencer, his nose against the glass.

"I like the big station better," said Marian, adjusting herself with interest on the little folding seat. "Why can't we get out there?"

"This is nearer home, dear."

Daddy sat next to Mother, and the taxi rattled off, spurting slimy mud.

"Hard trip, old girl?" Charles put his arm around Catherine's shoulders.

"Fair." Catherine shone at him softly. "Sort of a job, putting the family to bed on a sleeper. But it's over."

"An awful homely street," muttered Spencer, his face doleful.

"It's got lots of things in it," said Marian, wiggling down from her seat, and thrusting her face against the door. "See the folks and the stores and the street cars."

"It's dirty." Spencer turned from the window and looked darkly at Catherine. "I want to be back home," he said.

Catherine smiled at him. Poor boy! The little quiver of his nostrils was eloquent of nostalgia, of the rude necessity of adjustment.

"Our street isn't like this, Spencer," she assured him. "You will like that better."

"Turned into a country kid, have you?" Charles reached for the boy's arm. "Fine muscle! You'll have to try some handball with me this winter."

Spencer lost his forlornness at once. "In the court? Oh, gee!"

"I've got muscle too, Daddy." Marian bounced across to her father's knees. "Feel me! Can't I play ball with you?"

"Letty play!" wailed Letty.

The taxi jolted to a standstill in the traffic, and Letty was diverted by a large and black mammy descending from the street car close to the cab.

"Girls can't play," said Spencer conclusively.

"They can, too, can't they, Muvver!"

"Your mother agrees with you, Marian," said Charles. "But not on our handball courts, eh, Spencer?"

Catherine flushed at the submerged note in Charles's words.

"Don't you give my daughter an inferiority complex!" she said, lightly.

But Charles went on, the note rising to the surface.

"You won't find the house in very good shape. I wasn't expecting you so early."

The glow of the meeting was disappearing under the faint, secret friction. Catherine thought quickly, "He didn't like it—the job, or my coming down. But he isn't admitting it." Aloud she said, "Did Flora desert you?"

"Oh, no. She's there, her mouth larger than ever. I meant the finishing touches."

"We can give those."

"There's Morningside Park!" Spencer's shout was full of delight. "Rocks and trees an' everything!" The taxi had left One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and was bumping along the side street which bordered the park. The rocks shouldered up gray and wet through brown, worn shrubbery.

"There's where we had the cave," cried Marian. "I remember it."

Up to the Drive, a few blocks south, and just around the corner the taxi halted.

"Here we are!" Out they all scrambled, to stare up at the gray front, tessellated with windows, while Charles maneuvered the luggage. Catherine felt Spencer's cold hand creep into hers; she held it firmly, knowing that he, too, had the sinking depression with which that monotonous dingy structure filled her.

But Sam, the elevator boy, came out, all white grin and shiny eyes, to greet them and carry in the bags. Letty, as of old, clasped her hands over her stomach as the elevator shot up. The key clicked in the lock and the door opened on the familiar long hall. They were home again.

"When we have breakfast," declared Catherine, "we won't feel so much like lost cats!"

Flora, her gold tooth gleaming in her dark face, was loudly and cheerfully glad to see them. Catherine scurried for towels, and left the children scrubbing their hands, while she walked back through the hall with Charles, who had said he must go to his office immediately.

They faced each other in the dim light. Catherine struggled to throw off the constraint which had settled upon her.

"That's a grand suit," she said, laying her hand on his sleeve. "You better take your rain coat."

"It's at the office. I am afraid I can't come in for luncheon. I made this engagement downtown before I knew you were coming to-day."

"That's good." Catherine smiled at him. "Leaves me more time—there are endless things to do."

He looked at her, a curious reserve in his eyes.

"You are really going to do it, take that job?"

"I wrote you——"

"When do you start?"

"Monday. That's why I'm here." She couldn't help that air of defense! "I had to have a few days to shop for the children, and get the house running."

"Hard on them, isn't it?"

"I thought a few days couldn't matter so much to them as to me."

"No." Charles turned the doorknob.

"Charles!" Catherine seized his hand. "Are you—cross?"

"Of course not." He sounded impatient. "But I have to get over to college sometime to-day."

"Have you changed your mind about my trying this?"

"No." He pursed his under lip, hesitatingly. "I didn't know you were going to jump in so immediately. But it's quite all right."

Catherine released his hand, and he pulled open the door. He stood a moment on the threshold, and then wheeled.

"I—I'm glad you're home." Catherine was in his arms, her lips quivering as he kissed her.

"There, run along!" She patted his shoulder, her eyes misty.

But when he had gone, she leaned against the door, brushing hot tears from her lashes. She could hear the children, their voices raised in jangling. It was going to be hard, harder than she had thought. Bill was right; she would have a double job. She might have more than that, if Charles really carried a secret antagonism to her plan. Perhaps he was only gruffy; perhaps this was only a flicker of his unadmitted dislike of anything which threatened change, anything at least which he had not originated. But she saw, clearly, what she had felt as a possibility, that she had, for a time, his attitude as further weight to carry. That he wouldn't admit his attitude made the weight heavier, if anything. As she went slowly towards the sounds of squabbling, she saw her attempt as a monstrous undertaking, like unknown darkness into which she ventured, fearing at every step some unseen danger; and heaviness pressed down physically upon her.

VII

Breakfast restored the temper of the children, and lifted part of her own heaviness. The day then stretched into long hours. The children couldn't go out into the park, as the drizzle of the morning increased to cold rain. Toward noon Dr. Henrietta telephoned, and Catherine found her voice like a wind blowing into flame her almost smothered intentions. Henrietta was sending over that evening the woman she had mentioned: Miss Kelly. She could come at once, if Catherine liked her. She would have to come by the day, as she had an invalid mother. "We'll run in soon, Catherine, Bill and I. Don't you weaken!"

Lucky Miss Kelly wouldn't want a place to sleep, thought Catherine, as she went about the business of unpacking and reordering the apartment. With New York rents where they were it was all they could do to shelter the family decently. Was it really decent, she wondered, as she laid the piles of Spencer's clothes away in the white dresser, and looked about the little court room where he slept. She went to the window. A hollow square, full of rain and damp odors; windows with drab curtains blowing out into the rain; window sills with milk bottles, paper bags—the signs of poor students, struggling to wrest education out of the jaws of hunger! And yet, when she and Charles had found this apartment, they had thought it fine. A large, wide, airy court; none of your air shafts. She glanced up where the roof lines cut angles against the sodden sky. Spencer did watch the stars there, on clear nights. She picked up the laundry bag, stuffed with soiled clothes, and left the room. Marian's room was next, a little larger. She had planned to have Letty's bed moved in there this fall, opposite Marian's. Flora was on her knees, her yellowed silk blouse dangling from her tight belt, as her arm rotated the mop over the floor.

"Had a pleasant summer, Flora?" asked Catherine, as she opened Marian's bag.

"Land, yes, Mis' Hammond." Flora whisked her cloth. "I'm gonna get married to a puhfessional man. He's been showing me tenshions all summer. He ain't committed hisself till last week."

"You are!" Catherine looked at her in dismay. "When?"

"Oh, I ain't gonna give up my work, Mis' Hammond. Not till I sees how he pans out. I tried that once, and my las' husband, he couldn't maintain me as I was accustomed to be. So I says to my intended, I'll get married to you for pleasure, but I keeps my job. He don't care."

Catherine laughed. She knew that Flora had made earlier experiments in marriage, once to the extent of going back to Porto Rico. But she had, through all her changes of name, kept her good humor, her cleverness, and her apparent devotion to Catherine.

She rose swiftly from her knees, her long string of green beads clinking against her pail of water.

"I believes in keeping men in his place," she said, with an expanding grin. "If you don't, they keeps you in yours."

Catherine, adding the pile of Marian's dirty clothes to the jammed laundry bag, laughed again.

"I suppose so," she said. "What am I going to do with all this laundry! You'd think we hadn't washed all summer, the way things pile up."

"I'll take that right home to-night, Mis' Hammond. My sister can do it for you. My gentleman friend is stopping by for me in his car."

Catherine smoothed the cretonne scarf on the dressing table, adjusted the bright curtains, moved the little wicker chair to make room for Letty's bed, and with a grimace at the glimpse of the court even through the curtains, went on to the living room. Letty was asleep in Catherine's room. Spencer and Marian had scorned her hint that a nap might be good for them, and were sitting disconsolately in chairs drawn near the windows. Here, at least, was something beside too intimate suggestion of neighboring lives, even if the rain held it to-day in somber dullness. Beneath the windows the tops of trees pricked through the mist, as if one looked down into a forest; they were only the poplars and Balm of Gilead that grew on the steep slope of Morningside, but as Spencer had said, they were trees. And beyond them, extending far off into the dim gray horizon, the city—flat roofs, with strange shapes of chimneys, water tanks, or elevator sheds, merged to-day into dark solidity. On clear days, there was a hint of water in the distance, and the balanced curve of a great bridge. After all, thought Catherine, there was air in the bedrooms—you couldn't expect birch trees and stars in the city—and they did have distance and sometimes the enchantment of the varying city from these windows. But it was queer—she smiled as Spencer eyed her over his book—queer that beauty, sunlight, air, should be things for which you paid money; that you had to think yourself fortunate if you could afford one window which did not open upon sordidness.

"Moth-er, do you think I'd get too wet if I just went outdoors for five minutes?" Spencer was dolorous. "My throat is all stuffed up, and I'll lose my muscle, just sitting still."

"No fun going out here," grumped Marian.

"In a little while I am going out shopping for dinner. Would you like to go?"

VIII

In raincoats and rubbers, each with a bobbing umbrella, Catherine sighing at the lost summer comfort of knickerbockers and boots, the three went out into the rain. The children sparkled as if they had escaped from jail. Spencer peered from under his umbrella at the heavy sky.

"Mebbe when the tide turns the wind'll change," he said.

"Huh!" Marian giggled. "In the city? That's only in the country."

"I guess there is wind in town, too, and tides, aren't there, Moth-er?"

"Wind, all right!" The gust at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue caught their umbrellas like chips. They ducked into the wet wind, rounded the corner, and bent against it down the avenue.

"Isn't there any tide?" insisted Spencer.

"Yes, of course," Catherine answered, absently. Too far such a day, she supposed, to go down to her old market. That restaurant had changed hands again; a man behind the large window was even then drawing outlines for new gilt letters. The same hairdresser, the same idle manicure girl, intent on her own fingers, the drug store. They crossed the street, their feet wobbling over the cobblestones, slipping through the guttered water. There they were, at the market.

"Where's the kitty?" demanded Marian, her eyes bright in her rose-tanned face.

"Kitty?" Catherine weighed the oranges in her fingers, and looked about for a clerk.

"Why, yes, Muvver. That little gray kitty——"

"He'd probably be grown into an old gray alley cat by this time."

Catherine frowned a little over her list. She should have come out earlier; everything looked wilted, picked over. Vitamins, calories, and the budget. The old dreary business of managing decently, reasonably. The country and a garden of your own did spoil you for these dejected pyramids.

"There's another thing," she thought, as she watched the clerk hunt for a satisfying head of lettuce, stripping off brownish, slimy leaves. "When can I market, if I am downtown at nine? Perhaps this Miss Kelly can do it, with Letty, as I always have done." A swift picture of Letty in her go-cart, herself with the basket hanging from the handle. Marketing had been her most intellectual pursuit.

Back to the meat counter, with its rows of purplish fowls, their feathered heads languishing on their trussed wings, and the butcher, wiping his hands on the apron spotted and taut over his paunch.

Marian, her eyes round and black, watched him sharpen his knife, while Spencer lingered near the door. Spencer didn't, as he said, like dead things. Neither did Catherine, shivering as the butcher shoved aside the quivering lump of purplish-black liver. Queer, the forms that the demands of ordinary living took; forms you never dreamed of, when you entered living.

"We should have brought two baskets!" Catherine looked at the bundles.

"Send 'em over, lady?"

"It's so late."

"I can carry some, Moth-er." Spencer came back from his post at the door.

Marian had the bag of oranges under her arm, Spencer the basket, Catherine a huge bag of varied contents. A scramble at the door to open the three umbrellas, and they started up the street, the wind gusty at their heels.

"Be careful crossing the street," warned Catherine. Marian, darting ahead, reached the curb, slipped, and sat down plump in a puddle, the oranges rolling off, bright spots on the wet cobblestones. Marian, dismayed, sat still, her mouth puckered.

Catherine pulled her to her feet with a hand abrupt, almost harsh. The throbbing behind her temples which had begun the day before, in the steady drive of closing the house and getting off, had increased to a heavy drum. "Pick them up," she said. "Don't stand there like a ninny!"

Spencer's grin faded at the tone of her voice, and her flare of weary temper subsided as she watched them scurry after the fruit. They stowed the oranges into pockets, and corners of the basket.

Finally they were home again. Flora's loud "Glory, glory, halleleuia," swept down the hall as they opened the door, and Letty's accompaniment.

"She's found my drum!" Spencer fled to the kitchen, and a wail followed as Letty was reft of her instrument.

Catherine pressed her lips firmly together as she hung her dripping coat on the rack. "Steady," she said. "They are as tired as I am." Then she thought: that's the great trouble with being a mother. You never get away for a chance to sulk and indulge your bad temper.

Charles came in, with his blandest air of preoccupation. Flora had prepared the dinner, and then gone home when her gentleman friend called for her, to cook her own evening meal, leaving Catherine to broil the steak and set things on the table. Since Letty had slept so long, she was permitted to sit in her high-chair during dinner, where she conducted an insuppressible and very little intelligible conversation.

"She certainly needs training," declared Charles.

"She isn't often on hand for dinner," said Catherine, wearily.

Spencer and Marian cleared away the table, while Catherine bathed Letty, deafening herself to the crash which came from the kitchen. What had Marian dropped this time?

Then she heard them, chattering away to their father, with the occasional interruption of Charles's deep laugh. She hung away Letty's towels and garments, and let the water run for Marian's bath. Wasn't that Kelly person coming in? Would she, Catherine wondered, give the children their baths? Could she let anyone else do that? Those slender, rounded bodies, firm, ineffably young and sweet, changing so subtly from the soft baby curves of Letty into young strength. Oh, at every second there waited for her some coil of sentiment, of devotion, to hold her there, solid, unmoving, in the round of the past few years.

She was too tired to-night to think straight. She called Marian from the door, and was answered by a demonstrating wail.

"Not yet, Muvver. I have to see my Daddy."

But at last both she and Spencer were bathed and in bed. As Catherine turned out Spencer's light, she heard the doorbell.

"Who is it, Moth-er?" Spencer's head came up from his pillow.

"I don't know, son. But you go to sleep."

"Mother—" His voice was low, half ashamed. "Mother, what makes me ache in here?"

"Where?" Catherine hung over his bed. He drew her hand to his chest.

"When I think about my porch—an' everything."

"You better think about something here, Spencer." Catherine's words were tender. "Something you like here. That will cure your ache."

"But I can't think up anything to think about! You tell me something nice——"

"'F you talk to Spencer, you'd ought to talk to me, too," came Marian's sleepy protest from the adjoining room.

"Sh-h! You'll wake Letty." Catherine's mind moved numbly over Spencer's city likes. "Spencer, you might think about Walter Thomas. You can see him soon——"

"Well." Spencer sounded very doubtful. But Charles called her, and Catherine said good night to him and to Marian.

It was Miss Kelly who had rung. Catherine sat down in the living room, brushing her hair away from her face, to which weariness had given a creamy pallor under the summer tan, and wished furiously that she was not so tired, that she could see into this rather plump, sandy, stubby person who sat opposite her, with calm, light blue eyes meeting her gaze. She looked efficient, if not imaginative. Well, the children had imagination enough, and if Henrietta thought Miss Kelly would do, surely she would. Charles had retired into his study. Miss Kelly folded her plump hands in her lap and looked down at her round, sensible shoes as Catherine spoke of Dr. Gilbert's high recommendation.

She couldn't come before Monday. She liked nursing better, but the hours were so uncertain, and her mother needed her. Yes, she had cared for children before. She had always, for several years, had twenty-five dollars a week, when she lived in her own home.

H-m, thought Catherine, that will make one large dent in my wages! But I must have someone, and I can't fill my place for nothing. So Monday morning, about eight. Too bad the children were in bed, but then on Monday Miss Kelly could see them.

When Catherine had closed the door on the last descending glimpse of Miss Kelly's round face behind the elevator grill, she hurried back to the study. Charles looked up from his book.

"Did you like her, Charles? You do think she looks capable?"

"She has an air of honest worth." Charles laid aside his book. "Did you hire her?"

Catherine nodded.

"I shouldn't care to have you supplanted by that face, if I were Letty—or Spencer—or——"

Catherine moved around to the desk to the side of his chair, her fingers twisting together in a nervous little gesture.

"She looks sensible and good natured, and Henrietta says she is fine. I've got to try someone."

"I suppose you must."

Catherine, balancing on the edge of the desk, looked steadily at her husband. He was holding his thoughts away from her, out of his eyes.

"It's mostly Letty, of course," she said. "The others will be in school." She sighed. "She can come Monday, the day I start."

Then they were silent. Charles rubbed his thumb along the edge of his book, and Catherine watched him, her gray eyes heavy.

No use talking about it to-night, when she was so tired. She pushed the affair away.

"Poor Spencer is homesick for Maine," she said. "He wanted to know why he ached——"

"He needs to get out with boys more," said Charles sharply. "He's too notional for a boy his age."

Catherine felt a quick flicker of heat under her eyelids. Charles had said that before this summer.

"I want him to be a man," he continued, "not a sentimental little fool."

"I think you needn't worry about that." Catherine was icy. Then suddenly she slipped forward to the arm of his chair, her head down on his shoulder, one hand up to his cheek. "Good Lord, I'm tired! Don't talk about anything, or I'll fight!"

Charles pulled her down into his lap and held her close.

"That's more like it." His mouth was close to her ear. "Sitting off and staring at me! Silly old girl——"

Catherine laughed, just a weak flutter of sound.

"Call me names! But hug me, tighter!" She laughed again. Words, she thought—you can't get a person with words. They stand between you like a wall.

"You'd better go to bed. You feel limp as a dead leaf."

"Yes." She stretched comfortably. "In a minute——"

IX

Catherine sat at one of the living room windows, the floor about her chair littered with packages, the result of her shopping for the children. She unwrapped them methodically, clipped a name from the rolls of tape in her basket, and sewed the label in place. Spencer Hammond; Marian Hammond; Letitia Hammond. She was thankful that none of them had a longer name! After three gloomy days the sun shone again, pricking out spots of red in the roofs of the distance, falling in splotches of brilliance on the white stuff Catherine handled. The children were playing in the dining room, where the east windows admitted the broad shafts of sunlight. Poor kids! They had begged her to go outdoors with them, but her mother had telephoned that she was coming in.

Catherine had not known she was in town. She had been visiting her son in Wisconsin, George Spencer. Catherine had seen little of that brother since her own departure for college; he had married and gone west, sending back, at astonishingly frequent intervals, photographs of his increasing family. Mrs. Spencer visited him at least once each year, returning always with delighted accounts of the children, of George's business, of his wife.

Catherine folded the striped pajamas and laid them on the pile at her right. Her thoughts drifted around her mother and the small apartment in the Fifties where she kept house for Margaret, the youngest of the family. Letty came in a little rush toward her.

"Letty draw." She spread the paper on Catherine's knee. "For Gram." Her yellow head bent over it intently.

"What is it, Letty?" Catherine laid a finger softly on the little hollow just at the base of Letty's neck, an adorable hollow with a twist of pale hair above it.

"She says it's a picture of her fishing," called Marian. "Catching cunners. But I'm painting a good picture of our house for Grandma——"

"Letty paint?" Letty looked up, her eyes crinkled.

"Grandma will like a drawing just as well." Catherine picked up a set of rompers. "Mother's going to sew your name right on the band." Letty watched a moment and then trudged back to her corner on the dining room floor.

What would her mother think when Catherine told her of her plan? Catherine's hands dropped into her lap. She wouldn't say much. She never did. But that little crinkle of Letty's eyes was like hers! You saw her laughing at you. Since her own marriage Catherine had wondered about her mother, and the last few months, while she had struggled with her moods and desires, she had found that the admiration she had always felt had gathered a tinge of curiosity, or speculative wonder. How had her mother attained the lively serenity, the animated poise, the quiet, humorous tranquillity with which she bore herself? Catherine remembered her father only as a somewhat irritable invalid; the accident which had injured him and finally killed him had happened when she was young, and Margaret a mere baby. And yet, somehow, her mother had seemed to keep a whimsical invulnerability. She had sent them all to college, however she had managed even before the cost of living gained its ominous present-day sound. Only for the last few years, since Margaret, the last of them, had grown into a youthfully serious welfare worker, had Mrs. Spencer's income been adequate to the uses for it. And yet—Astonishing adjustment, thought Catherine. As if she had found what she most wanted in life. As if things outside herself couldn't scratch her skin.

There was a scramble of children to the door at the ring of the bell, and Catherine rose, her work sliding to the floor. They loved her, the children. Was that the answer to her curiosity? That her mother was essentially maternal? Catherine smiled as the delighted shouts of greeting moved down the hall toward her. No, that wasn't the answer. They had never felt, Catherine, or George, or Margaret, that they were the core of her life; what was?

"Cathy, dear!" How pretty she was, thought Catherine, as she bent to kiss her. A moment of encounter while she gazed at her; always Catherine had to pause that moment to regather all the outward details which during absence merged into her feeling of the person as a whole. She hadn't remembered how dark the blue of her mother's eyes was. Or was it only the small blue hat with the liberty scarf, and the new blue cape?

"How smart you look!" she said. "And a new dress, too!"

Mrs. Spencer slipped off her cape with a little twirl. "Paris model, reduced." She handed the cape to Spencer.

"It's pretty, Grandma." Marian touched the blue silk. "Little beads all over the front."

"You certainly look well!" Mrs. Spencer settled herself in a rocker, unpinned her veil, let Marian take her hat, and upon insistence from Letty, allowed her to hold the silk handbag. "Now please put my things all together, won't you?" She ran her fingers through her soft gray hair. Catherine watched her with tender eyes. Something valiant about those small hands, white and soft, with enlarged knuckles and fingers a little crooked, marked by hard earlier years.

Not until after luncheon did Catherine talk with her mother. The children had to show her their pictures; Charles came in, and Mrs. Spencer wanted to know about his new work; dinner had to be planned. Finally Letty was stowed away for her nap, and Spencer and Marian, with the promise of a walk when she woke, went off to read.

"I'll help you with that sewing." Mrs. Spencer threaded her needle. "You've done your shopping in a lump, haven't you? I thought you usually made some of these things."

"I won't have time this year."

Catherine was half afraid to tell her. Her proposition sounded absurd, as if she heard it through her mother's ears. But Mrs. Spencer listened quietly.

"That's what Charles meant, then," she said.

"He spoke of it?" Catherine looked up.

"He asked if I had heard how modern you had suddenly become."

Catherine snapped her thread. She wondered why she had felt this desperate need to make her mother approve of her scheme, and Charles, too. Wouldn't approval come after she had carried it through, if she could?

"Do you think me foolish—or wicked?"

Mrs. Spencer patted the tape into place on the blouse she held.

"Not at all, Cathy," she said.

"But you don't think I ought to do it?"

"That is for you to decide. You say you have found a nurse?"

"Yes."

"Did Dr. Henrietta Gilbert suggest this to you?"

Catherine's head came up at that, but her irritation scurried off into amusement; her mother looked so guileless, stitching with busy fingers.

"You don't see, then, that I can't help it? That I must try something? Oh, Mother, I've thought and thought——"

"Yes, that's just it. You think too much. You always thought, Cathy. That's why I was relieved when you met Charles. You didn't think much for a while, at least, and I hoped"—Mrs. Spencer was looking at her, her head on one side, her eyes bright, her mouth turning up in a funny little smile—"I hoped your thinking days were over. But it's in the air so. Women seem to take pride in being restless, unhappy. We were taught to consider that a sin."

"Is that why you're so nice?"

"No." Mrs. Spencer smiled. "Maybe my children were smarter than yours. I didn't find them such bad company."

"Oh, that's not it!" Catherine cried out. Then she laughed. "Mother, you're outrageous. You're making fun of me, just as if——"

"As if you wanted to be a missionary again."

"But I was only a child then. That was amusing."

"Yes. You didn't think so, then." Mrs. Spencer folded the blouse neatly. "Hasn't Spencer grown tall! I see you're buying eleven-year-old clothes for him."

"Well"—Catherine's mouth was stubborn—"I'll just have to show you! And Charles, too. He thinks it's a whim, I know."

"He hasn't objected?"

"Oh, no. Not in words. He wouldn't."

"Poor Charles. These modern women in your own home!" Mrs. Spencer's eyes crinkled almost shut. "Do you know why I came back early? Your sister Margaret has a modern turn, too."

"But she's not in town yet."

"No. She wrote, asking if I wouldn't like to stay with George this winter."

"Why?"

"I suppose she thinks a mother is a sort of nuisance. She wants to set up housekeeping with her friend."

"The little wretch!"

"Not exactly. But I did want that apartment myself, as I am fond of it. I think I'll take a roomer."

"Mother!" Catherine stared at her.

"She's been reading something a German wrote. What is his name? Freud. She's been thinking, too, I am afraid."

Catherine was silent; she recognized her instinctive protest as a flourish of habit, of righteousness for someone else. After all——

"She needn't be so apologetic," said Mrs. Spencer deliberately. "If she doesn't need me, I shall be glad to find someone nearer my own age."

Letty's deep voice announced her awakening. Mrs. Spencer decided to walk over to Riverside with Catherine and the children, as she could go on downtown from there by bus. After several minutes of agitated preparation, a frantic search for roller skates, they were in the hall, Letty rolling noisily along on her wooden "Go-Duck," her busy legs waving like plump antennæ. Catherine held the strap of Marian's skates firmly; Marian was all for skating right down the hall. Then, just as the elevator came, Catherine remembered that she hadn't paid Flora for the week.

Flora's gold tooth flashed as Catherine handed her the money.

"I certainly is obliged," she said. "My frien' and I, we're going on the Hudson River boat to-morrow, and I suspicions he's short of cash."

"You'll be in early on Monday, Flora? Miss Kelly is coming, and she'll need you to show her about things."

"Sakes, yes. You can go about your business, Mis' Hammond, with a light soul."

Flora was delighted at this venture of Catherine's. Catherine thought, a little grimly, as she hurried after the family, that Flora was the only one in the house who was pleased. It's her dramatic sense, she speculated, waiting for the elevator. I wish I had more of it myself, and Charles, too.

The sharp blue clarity of the air was like a sudden check rein, pulling Catherine's head up from doubtful thoughts. As they waited at Amsterdam Avenue for the car to rumble past, she glanced up the street; in the foreground the few blocks of sharp descent, and then the steady climb for miles, off to the distance where street and marginal buildings seemed as blue as the sky. It was like a mountain, with blue-gray shadows across the canyon of the street, and jagged cliffs of buildings merging into solid rock up the slope. She reached for the head of Letty's red duck. "You better walk across the street, Letty."

"No! Ducky go!" and bumping over the cobblestones it went, propelled vigorously, while Spencer and Marian stumbled along on their skates.

The walk through the half block of park behind the University buildings was smooth sailing. Catherine and her mother followed the children. "Wait for us at the gate!" warned Catherine.

At last they were across the Drive and safe on the lower walk of the park.

"Here's my old bench." Catherine sat down with her mother. "I can see clear to those steps from here."

Spencer was off with a whoop, his figure balancing surely as he sped. Marian chased him, a determined erectness in her body. Letty paddled after them, chanting loudly to her duck.

"When school opens," Catherine sighed, "they'll have some exercise, poor chickens. City life isn't easy for them."

"It's no place for children." Mrs. Spencer watched a passing group, a beruffled little girl yanking fretfully at the hand of her nurse, a small, fat boy howling in tearless monotony. "Not even a yard."

"We talked about a suburb last year. But Charles hates the idea of commuting, and he is so busy with his additional work that he'd never be home at all."

"Won't you miss these little expeditions with your children?"

Catherine looked hastily at her mother. But the bright blue eyes were apparently intent on a tug steaming along the river. The tide was running swiftly down, swirling off into the quiet water near shore bits of refuse, boxes, sticks, which caught the sun in dazzling sham before they drifted into ugly lack of movement.

"They don't need me when they are playing here," said Catherine. "Anyone would do, just to watch them."

"I wonder," said her mother. "I see some of these nurses do outlandish things."

"Miss Kelly looks intelligent and kind." Again stubbornness in Catherine's mouth, in her lowered eyelids. "And I might as well admit, I'm reaching the place where I won't be either of those things. You'd be ashamed of your daughter if you knew how peevish she can get!"

"Catherine, dear"—Mrs. Spencer laid her hand softly on Catherine's—"you know I don't mean to interfere. But are you sure you haven't just caught the general unrest, in the air and everywhere?"

"Where did it come from?" The children were coasting toward them, down the little hill. "Why do I feel it?"

"Oh, the war, no doubt."

"The war! Blame that for my hatred of this dreadful monotony, my lack of self-respect, my—my grubby, dingy, hopeless feeling!"

"I can see you have your mind made up." Mrs. Spencer caught Marian as she tumbled, laughing, against the seat.

"I beat Spencer back!"

"Come on and I'll beat up the hill!" Spencer wiggled to a standstill.

A wail went up. Letty and her duck were upside down, a jumble of legs and red wheels. Spencer clattered away to rescue her, Marian after him.

Mrs. Spencer began with a little chuckle a story of George's two youngest children. Catherine relaxed, content to leave her own problem. Her mother had said all she meant to say. The sun dropped lower and lower, until it seemed to catch on the sharp margin of the New Jersey shore and hang there, red, for long minutes. The tide had slackened and the water caught a metallic white luster. The park was almost deserted now. Finally Catherine called the children. They came; she smiled at their scarlet cheeks and clear eyes, their smudged hands and knees.

"Home now, and dinner."

"See the gold windows!" Spencer pointed to the massed gray buildings above the park.

"That's the sun," explained Marian, panting up the steps.

They waited with Grandmother until a bus lumbered to a halt, and they could wave her off down the Drive.

X

Charles came into the hall as they entered, clattering skates and duck.

"Hello!" He pinched Letty's cheek. "Where you been?" He moved close to Catherine and continued, in a confidential undertone, "I thought you'd be here. I brought Miss Partridge in. Don't you want her to stay to dinner?"

Catherine, with a swift glance at the disheveled group, and a swifter consideration of food—what had she told Flora to prepare?—shrugged.

"Of course," she said. She concealed a secret grin at the relief which ran over Charles's nonchalance. In the old days—how long ago!—one of her most sacred lares had been just that, that Charles should feel free as air about bringing any one in at any time. What was home for? But with three children, perhaps she burned less incense at that altar. She was moving toward the door of the living room as she thought.

"Here's my wife and family, Miss Partridge."

"I am glad you waited for us." Catherine disengaged herself from Letty's fingers and went to meet the woman who was rising from the window. "I have wished to meet you." Catherine smiled as she spoke; her smile touched her face with a subtle irradiance, charming, completely personal. She's younger than I had supposed, Catherine was thinking, and quite different.

"Dr. Hammond urged me to wait." Her voice was clear and hard, like a highly polished instrument. Her manner was as cool and detached as the long white hand she extended. "And this is the family?"

"Letitia, Marian, and Spencer," announced Charles. Catherine watched them make their decorous greetings with a little flicker of pride. Sometimes Marian had ridiculous fits of shyness and wouldn't curtsey. "You'll have to test them, Miss Partridge," Charles went on. "See if my paternal bias misled me in my tests. Their I.Q.'s seem satisfactory."

"Of course they would!" Miss Partridge's smile lifted her short upper lip from a row of even teeth so shining that they looked transparent. "Such a handful must keep you busy, Mrs. Hammond. You've just come in from the country, haven't you?"

"Good Lord!" thought Catherine. "I'm to be treated like an adoring mother." Her level glance met the dark brown eyes for an instant; she felt a queer clatter, as if she had struck metal. Aloud she said, "Won't you have dinner with us, Miss Partridge? I should enjoy hearing your side of all these new schemes."

"That's it." Charles was hearty, insistent. "Let me take your wraps."

Elegant, slim, in soft taupe tailor-made, close-fitting velour hat. She gets herself up well; Catherine was aware suddenly of her own appearance in rough tweed coat and last year's hat with its bow of ribbon rather wilted. Not so hasty, she warned herself; look out, or you'll have a rooted dislike out of this feeling. Queer, how some women heighten their femininity by tailored clothes. Miss Partridge, without a demur, had stripped off her jacket and removed her hat. Her blouse of dull gleaming silk fitted closely about her throat, her dark hair was wound in a heavy braid about her smooth, small head; lovely skin, with a pale luster. Catherine noted in a flash the heavy jade cuff links, the small bar of jade that fastened the collar, the chain of dull silver and jade which looped into the belt. She's the sort that affects the masculine for more subtle results, was the swift conclusion, as she ushered the children out of the room.

It was a nuisance, having a maid who couldn't stay to serve dinner. But in other ways Flora couldn't be touched, and they did like not having to house her. Catherine heard the tone of that clear, hard voice as she moved from bathroom to kitchen, lighting the gas under the vegetables, supervising Letty's supper and bath. Is she brilliant, or shrewd, she wondered, as she directed Spencer in his grave attempt to lay another place at the table. She is young to have achieved her reputation. Has she one, or has she made Charles think she has? Don't be a cat!