the drifting leaves. The squirrels scampered away; the boy and dog
whirled on; and the woman, from the world into which she had entered
because she must, went far away into the world of childhood. From her
day of toil in a world that denied her womanhood she went back into
her Yesterdays where womanhood--motherhood--was supreme. Perhaps it
was that subtle flavor in the air that did it; or it may have been the
boy and his dog as they whirled past--care free as the drifting brown
leaves; or perhaps it was the sight of the man repairing the roof of
the house with his long ladder resting against the eaves: the woman
herself could not have told what it was, but, whatever it was, she
slipped away to one of the brightest, happiest, days in all her
Yesterdays.

But, for a little while, that day was not at all bright and happy. It
started out all right then, little by little, everything went wrong;
and then it changed again and became one of the best of all her
Yesterdays. The day went wrong for a little while at first because
everything in the house was being taken up, or taken down, beaten,
shaken, scrubbed or dusted; everything was being arranged or
disarranged and rearranged again. Surely there was never such
confusion, so it seemed to the little girl, in any home in all the
world. Every time that she would get herself nicely settled with her
dolls she would be forced to move again; until there was in the whole,
busy, bustling place no corner at all where she was not in somebody's
way. When she would have entered into the confusion and helped to
straighten things out, the woman told her, rather sharply, to go away,
and declared that her efforts to help only made things worse.

Out in the garden, at the opening in the hedge, she called and called
and waited and waited for the boy. But the boy did not answer. He was