Maitland's boy ain't our kind. He must be taken care of."

When John Blair died, perhaps a sort of faithfulness to his
wishes made his Sally "take care" of Herbert Maitland by marrying
him. "His child certainly does need a mother," she thought;--"an
intelligent mother, not a goose." By and by she told Herbert of
his child's need; or at any rate helped him to infer it. And
somehow, before he knew it, he married her. By inheritance they
owned the Works between them; so really their marriage was, as
the bride expressed it, "a very sensible arrangement"; and any
sensible arrangement appealed to John Blair's daughter. But after
a breathless six months of partnership--in business if in nothing
else--Herbert Maitland, leaving behind him his little two-year-
old Nannie, and an unborn boy of whose approaching advent he was
ignorant, got out of the world as expeditiously as consumption
could take him. Indeed, his wife had so jostled him and deafened
him and dazed him that there was nothing for him to do but die--
so that there might be room for her expanding energy. Yet she
loved him; nobody who saw her in those first silent, agonized
months could doubt that she loved him. Her pain expressed itself,
not in moans or tears or physical prostration, but in work. Work,
which had been an interest, became a refuge. Under like
circumstances some people take to religion and some to drink; as
Mrs. Maitland's religion had never been more than church-going
and contributions to foreign missions, it was, of course, no help
under the strain of grief; and as her temperament did not dictate
the other means of consolation, she turned to work. She worked
herself numb; very likely she had hours when she did not feel her
loss. But she did not feel anything else. Not even her baby's
little clinging hands, or his milky lips at her breast. She did