the baby from her.

"What are you going to do with him?" she demanded, a-tremble with
rage and a sense of impotent helplessness, as, avoiding her quick
movement, Martin went into the bedroom.

"Let him go to sleep as other children do, while you finish
getting supper. Do you want to make a sissy of him?"

"A lot you care what he becomes!" she flashed, conflicting
impulses contending for mastery, as Billy, now thoroughly awake
and seeing his mother, began to cry, pleading to her with big
blue eyes and out-stretched arms to take him. She started
forward, but Martin stepped between herself and the crib.

"Martin Wade, let me pass. He's mine."

"It isn't going to hurt him to cry. He does it often enough."

"If you had a really cross baby around you'd know how good and
reasonable Billy is," she flamed, torn by the little sobs.

"You get out to that kitchen," he ordered, more openly angry than
Rose had ever seen him. "I've had enough of this talk, do you
hear, and enough of this way of doing. Don't you set foot in here
again till supper's over. I've had quite enough, too, of jumping
up and down to wait on myself."

Confusedly, Rose thought of her countless hours of lost sleep,
her even yet unrecovered strength, the enormous readjustment of