work, she greeted her son with the same passionate tenderness. Never had
it lessened, never, even when she was most discouraged, had she failed
to summon her strength and her sweetness for this beatific end to the
day. For Archibald was more than a son to her. As he grew older their
characters became more perfectly adjusted, and the rare bond of a deep
mental sympathy held them together. Fanny loved her as a spoiled child
loves the dispenser of its happiness; but in Archibald's devotion there
was something of the worship of a man for an ideal.

Flushed and hungry, the boy came in, and after kissing her hurriedly,
ran off to wash his face and hands before dinner. When he came back the
table was laid, with a bunch of lilacs in a cut glass vase over the
darned spot in the tablecloth, and Miss Polly was bringing in the
old-fashioned soup tureen, which had belonged to Gabriella's maternal
grandmother.

"If you don't sit right straight down everything will be cold," said
Miss Polly severely, for this was her customary manner of announcing
dinner. Every night for ten years she had threatened them with a cold
dinner while she served them a hot one.

With a child on either side of her, Gabriella sat down, and ladled the
soup out of the old china tureen. It was her consecrated hour--the
single hour of her toiling day that she dedicated to personal happiness;
and because it was her hour, her life had gradually centred about it as
if it were the divine point of her universe--the pivot upon which her
whole world revolved. Nothing harsh, nothing sordid, nothing sad, ever
touched the sacred precincts of her twilight hour with her children.

"I can beat any boy at school running, mother," said Archibald, watching