wedding finery she had an uncomfortable feeling of defiance under a
fire of hostile eyes in the next house. She kept her own windows
upon that side as clear and bright as diamonds, and her curtains in
the stiffest, snowy slants, lest her terrible mother-in-law should
have occasion to impeach her housekeeping, she being a notable
housewife. The habits of the Louds of Loudville were considered
shiftless in the extreme, and poor Fanny had heard an insinuation of
Mrs. Zelotes to that effect.

The elder Mrs. Brewster's knowledge of her son's house and his wife
was limited to the view from her west windows, but there was
half-truce when little Ellen was born. Mrs. Brewster, who considered
that no woman could be obtained with such a fine knowledge of
nursing as she possessed, and who had, moreover, a regard for her
poor boy's pocket-book, appeared for the first time in his doorway,
and opened her heart to her son's child, if not to his wife, whom
she began to tolerate.

However, the two women had almost a hand-to-hand encounter over
little Ellen's cradle, the elder Mrs. Brewster judging that it was
for her good to be rocked to sleep, the younger not. Little Ellen
herself, however, turned the balance that time in favor of her
grandmother, since she cried every time the gentle, swaying motion
was hushed, and absolutely refused to go to sleep, and her mother
from the first held every course which seemed to contribute to her
pleasure and comfort as a sacred duty. At last it came to pass that
the two women met only upon that small neutral ground of love, and
upon all other territory were sworn foes. Especially was Mrs.
Zelotes wroth when Eva Loud, after the death of her father, one of
the most worthless and shiftless of the Louds of Loudville, came to