taken on weight, the one, solidly, comfortably; the other, flabbily,
unhealthily. With the encroaching fat Flora's small, delicate features
seemed, somehow, to disappear in her face, so that you saw it as a large
white surface bearing indentations, ridges, and hollows like one of
those enlarged photographs of the moon's surface as seen through a
telescope. A self-centred face, and misleadingly placid. Aunt Sophy's
large, plain features, plumply padded now, impressed you as indicating
strength, courage, and a great human understanding.

From her husband and her children Flora exacted service that would have
chafed a galley-slave into rebellion. She loved to lie in bed, in a
lavender bed-jacket with ribbons, and be read to by Adele or Eugene, or
her husband. They all hated it.

"She just wants to be waited on, and petted, and admired," Adele had
stormed one day, in open rebellion, to her Aunt Sophy. "She uses it as
an excuse for everything and has, ever since 'Gene and I were children.
She's as strong as an ox." Not a very ladylike or daughterly speech,
but shockingly true.

Years before a generous but misguided woman friend, coming in to call,
had been ushered in to where Mrs. Baldwin lay propped up in a nest of
pillows.

"Well, I don't blame you," the caller had gushed. "If I looked the way
you do in bed I'd stay there forever. Don't tell me you're sick, with
all that lovely colour!"

Flora Baldwin had rolled her eyes ceilingward. "Nobody ever gives me
credit for all my suffering and ill-health. And just because all my