either that the bitter cold had sharpened their appetites, or that the
old-fashioned one-o'clock dinner was a cheerful break in the monotony of
the day. There was a middle-aged man, who was evidently the strong stay and
staff on which the old people leaned. His wife was the housekeeper of the
family, and she was emphatically the "house-mother," as the Germans phrase
it. Every line of her good, but rather care-worn, face bespoke an anxious
solicitude about everybody and everything except herself. It was apparent
that she had inherited not a little of the "Martha" spirit, and "was
careful about many things;" but her slight tendency to worry saved others a
world of worriment, for she was the household providence, and her
numberless little anxieties led to so much prevention of evil that there
was not much left to cure. Such was her untiring attention that her
thoughtless, growing children seemed cared for by the silent forces of
nature. Their clothes came to them like the leaves on the trees, and her
deft fingers added little ornaments that cost the wearers no more thought
than did the blossoms of spring to the unconscious plants of the garden.
She was as essential to her husband as the oxygen in the air, and he knew
it, although demonstrating his knowledge rather quietly, perhaps. But she
understood him, and enjoyed a little secret exultation over the strong
man's almost ludicrous helplessness and desolation when her occasional
absences suspended for a brief time their conjugal partnership. She
surrounded the old people with a perpetual Indian-summer haze of
kindliness, which banished all hard, bleak outlines from their late
autumnal life. In brief, she was what God and nature designed woman to
be--the gracious, pervading spirit, that filled the roomy house with
comfort and rest. Sitting near were her eldest son and pride, a lad about
thirteen years of age, and a girl who, when a baby, had looked so like a
boy that her father had called her "Johnnie," a sobriquet which still clung
to her. Close to the mother's side was a little embodiment of vitality,
mischief, and frolic, in the form of a four-year-old boy, the dear torment