years and the years of travel had been crowded with interests and
enterprises. But she had never been tired before; she had never
felt, as she felt now, that she could fall asleep at the dinner
table for sheer weariness, and that no trial was more difficult to
bear than Jim's cheerful announcement that the Deanes might be in
later for a call, or the Weavers wanted them to come over for a game
of bridge.

And what did she accomplish, after all? she thought sometimes. What
mark did her busy days leave upon her life? She dressed and
undressed the children, she bathed, rocked, amused them; indeed, she
was so adoring a mother that sometimes whole precious fractions of
hours slipped by while she was watching them, laughing at them,
catching the little unresponsive soft cheeks to hers for the kisses
that interfered so seriously with their important little goings and
comings. She sewed on buttons and made puddings for Jim, she went
for aimless walks, pushing Jinny before her in the go-cart, and
guiding the chattering Diego with her free hand. She paused long in
the market, uncomfortably undecided between the expensive steak Jim
liked so much, and the sausages that meant financial balm to her own
harassed soul. She commenced letters to her mother that drifted
about half-written until Jinny captured and destroyed them. She
sewed up rents in cloth lions and elephants, and turned page after
page of the children's cloth books. Same and eventless, the months
went by,--it was March, and the last of the rains,--it was July, and
she and Jim were taking the children off for long Sundays in
Sausalito, or on the Piedmont hills,--it was October, with the usual
letter from Mother about Thanksgiving,--it was Christmas-time again!
The seasons raced through their familiar surprises, and were gone.
Anne had a desperate sense of wanting to halt them; just to think,