er bed-jacket with ribbons, and be read to by Adele or Eugene, or
her husband. They all hated it.

"She just wants to be waited on, and petted, and admired," Adele had
stormed one day, in open rebellion, to her Aunt Sophy. "She uses it as
an excuse for everything and has, ever since 'Gene and I were children.
She's as strong as an ox." Not a very ladylike or daughterly speech,
but shockingly true.

Years before a generous but misguided woman friend, coming in to call,
had been ushered in to where Mrs. Baldwin lay propped up in a nest of
pillows.

"Well, I don't blame you," the caller had gushed. "If I looked the way
you do in bed I'd stay there forever. Don't tell me you're sick, with
all that lovely colour!"

Flora Baldwin had rolled her eyes ceilingward. "Nobody ever gives me
credit for all my suffering and ill-health. And just because all my
blood is in my cheeks."

Flora was ambitious, socially, but too lazy to make the effort necessary
for success in that direction.

"I love my family," she would say. "They fill my life. After all, that's
a profession in itself--being a wife and mother."

She showed her devotion by taking no interest whatever in her husband's
land schemes; by forbidding Eugene to play football at school for fear
he might be injured; by impressing Adele with the necessity for vivacity
and modishness because of what she called her unfortunate lack of
beauty.

"I don't understand it," she used to say in the child's very presence.
"Her father's handsome enough, goodness knows; and I wasn't such a
fright when I was a girl. And look at her! Little, dark, skinny thing."

The boy Eugene grew up a very silent, handsome shy young fellow. The
girl dark, voluble, and rather interesting. The husband, more and more
immersed in his business, was absent from home for long periods;
irritable after some of these home-comings; boisterously high-spirited
following other trips. Now growling about household expenses and unpaid
bills; now urging the purchase of some almost prohibitive luxury. Any
one but a nagging, self-absorbed, and vain woman such as Flora would
have marked these unmistakable signs. But Flora was a taker, not a
giver. She thought herself affectionate because she craved affection
unduly. She thought herself a fond mother because she insisted on having
her children with her, under her thumb, marking their devotion as a
prisoner marks time with his feet, stupidly, shufflingly, advancing not
a