daily task. Women from the outside were not allowed in the hotel
laundry, and so the task fell naturally to the baby's mother. She
assumed it gladly, but when the line of snowy linen was blowing
free in the summer wind, and the cake of soap had been put on its
special rafter, and the tubs were draining, Nancy usually went up
to her bedroom, tiptoeing in because of the sleeper, and flung
herself down for a heavy nap.

After luncheon she gathered in her linen and watched by the
wideawake baby. Then they went down to the cool shade by the
creek, and Junior threw stones, and splashed fat hands in the
shallows, and his mother watched him adoringly. It never entered
her head that she was anything but privileged to be able to slave
for him. He was always and supremely worth while. Nancy's only
terrors were that something would happen to rob her of the honour.
She wanted no other company; Junior was her world, except when
Saturday's noon train brought Bert. She told her husband, and
meant it, that she was too happy; they did not need the world.

But sometimes the world intruded, and turned Nancy's hard-won
philosophy to ashes. She did not want to be idle, and she did not
want to be rich, but when she saw women younger than herself, in
no visible way inferior, who were both, her calm was shattered for
a time.

One day she and Bert wheeled the boy, in his small cart, down a
pleasant unfamiliar roadway, and across a rustic bridge, and,
smiling over their adventure, found themselves close to a low,
wide-spreading Colonial house, with striped awnings shading its
wide porches, and girls and men in white grouped about a dozen