morning as into a new birth of sense, and greeted the world with
helpless childish weeping, but now she was beginning to settle
comfortably into this strange order of things. Her face, as she sat
thus, wore the ready curves of smiles instead of tears. Elmira was
one whose strength would always be in dependence. Now her young
brother showed himself, as if by a miracle, a leader and a strong
prop, and she could assume again her natural attitude of life and
growth. She was no longer strange to herself in these strange ways,
and that was wherein all the bitterness of strangeness lay.

When Jerome came down-stairs, in his little poor best jacket and
trousers and his clean Sunday shirt, she stood in the door and looked
at him curiously, but with a perfect rest of confidence.

Jerome looked at her with dignity, and yet with a certain childish
importance, without which he would have ceased to be himself at all.
"Look out for mother," he whispered, admonishingly, and went out,
holding his head up and his shoulders back, and feeling his sister's
wondering and admiring eyes upon him, with a weakness of pride, and
yet with no abatement of his strength of purpose, which was great
enough to withstand self-recognition.

The boy that morning had a new gait when he had once started down the
road. The habit of his whole life--and, more than that, an inherited
habit--ceased to influence him. This new exaltation of spirit
controlled even bones and muscles.

Jerome, now he had fairly struck out in life with a purpose of his
own, walked no longer like his poor father, with that bent shuffling
lope of worn-out middle age. His soul informed his whole body, and