ockings had gone back to the third bureau drawer--to the
bottom--and never had her ankles flashed a silken challenge to a public
that might misunderstand.

Yet--and this it was that was making Winona old before her time--always
in her secret heart of hearts she did long abjectly to wear silk
stockings--all manner of sinful silken trifles. Evil yearnings like this
would sweep her. But she took them to be fruits of a natural depravity
that good women must fight. Thus far she had triumphed.

Mrs. Penniman now wielded the palm-leaf fan. She eyed her husband with
an almost hardened glance, then ran a professional eye over the lines of
Winona. Her head moved with quick little birdlike turnings. Her dark
hair was less orderly than Winona's, and--from her kitchen work--two
spots of colour burned high on her cheeks.

"Your locket's slipped inside your waist," she said, not dreaming that
Winona had in shame brought this about.

Winona, who would have been shamed again to explain this, withdrew the
bauble. The fond mother now observed the book above which her daughter
bent, twisting her neck to follow the title.

"Is it interesting?" she asked; and then: "The way to know a man--cook
for him."

Her daughter winced, suffering a swift picture of her too-light mother,
cooking for Mr. Arnold.

"I should think you'd pick out a good novel to read," went on her
mother. "That last one I got from the library--it's about a beautiful
woman that counted the world well lost for love."

Winona murmured indistinctly.

"She didn't--she didn't stop at anything," added the mother, brightly.

"Oh, Mother!"

"I don't care! The Reverend Mallett himself said that novels should be
read for an understanding of life--ever novels with a wholesome sex
interest. The very words he said!"

"Mother, Mother!" protested Winona with a quick glance at her father.

She doubted if any sex interest could be wholesome; and surely, with
both sexes present, the less said about such things the better. To her
relief the perilous topic was abandoned.

"I suppose you both heard the big news today."

Mrs. Penniman spoke ingenuously, but it was downright lying--no less.
She supposed they had not heard the big news. She was certain they had
not. Winona was attentive. Her mother's business of plain and fancy
dressmaking did not a little to make the acoustics of Newbern superior.
From her clients she gleaned the freshest chronicles of Newbern's social
life, many