appiest, after all. It's the
married woman who drinks the cup to the last bitter drop. There you sit,
Sophy, fifty years old, and life hasn't even touched you. You don't know
how cruel life is."

Suddenly, "There!" said Adele. The other three in the room stood up and
faced the door. The sound of a motor stopping outside. Daniel Oakley's
hearty voice: "Well, it only took us five minutes from the station.
Pretty good."

Footsteps down the hall. Marian King stood in the doorway. They faced
her, the four--Baldwin and Adele and Flora and Sophy. Marian King stood
a moment, uncertainly, her eyes upon them. She looked at the two older
women with swift, appraising glance. Then she came into the room,
quickly, and put her two hands on Aunt Sophy's shoulders and looked into
her eyes straight and sure.

"You must be a very proud woman," she said. "You ought to be a very
proud woman."

APRIL 25TH, AS USUAL

Mrs. Hosea C. Brewster always cleaned house in September and April. She
started with the attic and worked her purifying path down to the cellar
in strict accordance with Article I, Section 1, Unwritten Rules for
House Cleaning. For twenty-five years she had done it. For twenty-five
years she had hated it--being an intelligent woman. For twenty-five
years, towel swathed about her head, skirt pinned back, sleeves rolled
up--the costume dedicated to house cleaning since the days of
What's-Her-Name mother of Lemuel (see Proverbs)--Mrs. Brewster had gone
through the ceremony twice a year.

Furniture on the porch, woollens on the line, mattresses in the
yard--everything that could be pounded, beaten, whisked, rubbed,
flapped, shaken, or aired was dragged out and subjected to one or all of
these indignities. After which, completely cowed, they were dragged in
again and set in their places. Year after year, in attic and in cellar,
things had piled up higher and higher--useless things, sentimental
things; things in trunks; things in chests; shelves full of things
wrapped up in brown-paper parcels.

And boxes--oh, above all, boxes: pasteboard boxes, long and flat, square
and oblong, each bearing weird and cryptic pencillings on one end;
cryptic, that is, to any one except Mrs. Brewster and you who have owned
an attic. Thus "H's Fshg Tckl" jabberwocked one long, slim box. Another
stunned you with "Cur Ted Slpg Pch." A cabalistic third hid its contents
under "Sip Cov Pinky Rm." To say nothing of such curt yet intriguing
fra