her own life in her sincere efforts to do her best by the whole
household, her joyous acceptance of all the perpetual self-denial
her new duties to Billy necessitated. In comparison, the
inconveniences to which Martin had been put seemed trifling. The
occasional delays, and the unusual bother of stepping to the
stove, now and then, to pour himself and the men a hot cup of
coffee--this was their sum total. And how injured he really felt!
The injustice of it left her speechless. Nails biting into her
hands in her struggle for self-control, she left the room. With a
slam of the door behind him, Martin followed her.

Blindly she strove for reason. Billy would simply cry himself to
sleep--it was bad for his whole nervous system, but it would not
actually make him sick. What a chaos must be in that little
heart! His mother had failed him for the first time in his life.
It was cruel, the way Martin had forced her to this, and as she
listened, for the next half hour, to the muffled sound of Billy's
crying and saw how impervious to it Martin was, she knew that
never again could things be the same between her husband and
herself.

But when, supper over, she found the corners of the rosebud mouth
still pathetically down and Billy's breath still quivering in
long gasps, she gathered the snuggly body to her and vowed in
little broken love-words that from now on his father should have
no further opportunities for discipline. Knowing him as she did,
she should have trained the baby in the first place to go to
sleep alone, should have denied herself those added sweet
moments. After this she would be on her guard, forestall Martin,
do tenderly what he would do harshly. Never again should her boy