reply seemed to relieve the doctor's mind. His face lighted up. "I
understand! Don't worry a mite. You will be all right in a few minutes.
It is only a temporary nerve disturbance."

This proved to be true, and as her lips resumed their placid sweetness
my courage came back. In a few hours she was able to see quite clearly,
or at least as clearly as was normal to her age. Nevertheless I accepted
this attack as a distinct and sinister warning. It not only emphasized
her dependence upon me, it made me very definitely aware of what would
happen to our household if she were to become a helpless invalid. Her
need of a larger bed-chamber, with a connecting bathroom was imperative.

"I know you will both suffer from the noise and confusion of the
building," I said to my aunt, "but I am going to enlarge mother's room
and put in water and plumbing. If she should be sick in that small
bedroom it would be horrible."

Up to this time our homestead had remained simply a roomy farmhouse on
the edge of a village. I now decided that it should have the
conveniences of a suburban cottage, and to this end I made plans for a
new dining-room, a new porch, and a bath-room.

Mother was appalled at the audacity of my designs. She wanted the larger
chamber, of course, but my scheme for putting in running water appealed
to her as something almost criminally extravagant. She was troubled,
too, by the thought of the noise, the dirt, the change which were
necessary accompaniments of the plan.

I did my best to reassure her. "It won't take long, mother, and as for
the expense, you just let _me_ walk the floor."

She said no more, realizing, no doubt, that I could not be turned aside
from my purpose.

There were no bathrooms in West Salem in 1899--the plumber was still the
tinner, and when the news of my ambitious designs got abroad it created
almost as much comment as my brother's tennis court had roused some five
years earlier. As a force making toward things high-fi-lutin, if not
actually un-American, I was again discussed. Some said, "I can't
understand how Hamlin makes all his money." Others remarked, "Easy come,
easy go!" Something unaccountable lay in the scheme of my life. It was
illogical, if not actually illegal.

"How can he go skittering about all over the world in this way?" asked
William McEldowney, and Sam McKinley said to my mother, "I swear, I
don't see how you and Dick ever raised such a boy. He's a
'sport,'--that's what he