children. Now that her apprehensions on that score had
grown paler, she was almost as much afraid of having dust
in the house as she had once been of having children in it.
If dust did not get in, it did not have to be got out, she said.
She would take any amount of trouble to avoid trouble.
Why, nobody knew. Certainly her husband had never
been able to make her out. Such little, mean natures are
among the darkest and most baffling of created things.
There is no law by which they can be explained. The or-
dinary incentives of pain and pleasure do not account for
their behavior. They live like insects, absorbed in petty
activities that seem to have nothing to do with any genial
aspect of human life.

Mrs. Archie, as Mrs. Kronborg said, "liked to gad."
She liked to have her house clean, empty, dark, locked, and
to be out of it--anywhere. A church social, a prayer
meeting, a ten-cent show; she seemed to have no prefer-
ence. When there was nowhere else to go, she used to sit
for hours in Mrs. Smiley's millinery and notion store, lis-
tening to the talk of the women who came in, watching
them while they tried on hats, blinking at them from her
corner with her sharp, restless little eyes. She never talked
much herself, but she knew all the gossip of the town and
she had a sharp ear for racy anecdotes--"traveling men's
stories," they used to be called in Moonstone. Her clicking
laugh sounded like a typewriting machine in action, and,
for very pointed stories, she had a little screech.

Mrs. Archie had been Mrs. Archie for only six years,