room and the square deal table between them. Then began the chase that
suddenly sank into a degrading and undignified proceeding. Around and
around the two went, and presently the child began to laugh again as
the element of sport entered in.

So Theodora came upon them, and her deeper understanding of her husband's
face frightened and spurred her to action. In that moment, while she
feared, she loved, as she had never loved before, her small daughter. If
the child was a conscience to her stern father, she was a materialization
of all the suppressed defiance of the mother, and, ignoring consequences,
she ran to Priscilla, gathered her in her arms, and over the little, hot,
panting body, confronted the blazing eyes of her husband.

And Nathaniel had done--nothing; said nothing! In a moment the fury,
outwardly, subsided, but deep in all three hearts new emotions were born
never to die.

After that there was a triangle truce. The years slipped by. Theodora
taught her little daughter to read by a novel method which served the
double purpose of quickening the keen intellect and arousing a
housewifely skill.

The alphabet was learned from the labels on the cans of vegetables and
fruits on Theodora's shelves. There was one line of goods made by a firm,
according to its own telling, high in the favour of "their Majesties So
and So," that was rich in vowels and consonants. When Priscilla found
that by taking innocent looking little letters and stringing them
together like beads she could make words, she was wild with delight, and
when she discovered that she could further take the magic words and by
setting them forth in orderly fashion express her own thoughts or know