undeniably mouldy. The bath-room, despite its delightful size, and
the ivy that rapped outside its window, was not a modern bath-room.
The backyard, once sacred to geraniums and grass, and odd pots of
shrubs, was sunny for the children's playing, to be sure, but no
longer picturesque after their sturdy little boots had trampled it
down, and with lines of their little clothes intersecting it. Anne
began to think seriously of the big apartments all about, hitherto
regarded as enemies, but perhaps the solution, after all. The modern
flats were delightfully airy, high up in the sun, their floors were
hard-wood, their bath-rooms tiled, their kitchens all tempting
enamel, and nickel plate, and shining new wood. One had gas to cook
with, furnace heat, hall service, and the joy of the lift.

"What if we do have to endure a dining-room with red paper and black
woodwork, Jim," she would say, "and have near-Tiffany shades and a
hall two feet square? It would be so COMFORTABLE!"

But if Jim agreed,--"we'll have a look at some of them on Sunday,"
Anne would hesitate.

"They're so horribly commonplace; they're just what every one else
has!" she would mourn.

Commonplace,--Anne said the word over to herself sometimes, in the
long hours that she spent alone with the children. That was what her
life had become. The inescapable daily routine left her no time for
unnecessary prettiness. She met each day bravely, only to find
herself beaten and exhausted every night. It was puzzling, it was
sometimes a little depressing. Anne reflected that she had always
been busy, she was indeed a little dynamo of energy, her college