t when he went back to the house the grey look in his
mother's face told him more than her words ever told. Before they left
that night the pink milliner had already planned the changes which were
to celebrate her coming and her ruling.

So Rodney and his wife came, all the old man prophesied in a few brief
sentences to his wife proving true. There was no great struggle on the
mother's part; she stepped aside from governing, and became as like a
servant as could be. An insolent servant-girl came, and she and Rodney's
wife started a little drama of incompetency, which should end as the
hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the
place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with
that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted
soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight
that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the
white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old
man's heart. He had resentment both for the old wife and himself, and
he hated the pink milliner for the humiliation that she heaped upon them
both. Rodney did not see one-fifth of it, and what he did see lost
its force, because, strangely enough, he loved the gaudy wife who
wore gloves on her bloodless hands as she did the house-work and spent
numberless afternoons in trimming her own bonnets. Her peevishness grew
apace as the newness of the experience wore off. Uncle Jim seldom spoke
to her, as he seldom spoke to anybody, but she had an inkling of the
rancour in his heart, and many a time she put blame upon his shoulders
to her husband, when some unavoidable friction came.

A year, two years, passed, which were as ten upon the shoulders of
the old people, and then, in the dead of winter, an important thing
happened. About the month of March Rodney's first child was expected.
At the end of January Rodney had to go away, expecting to return in less
than a month. But, in the middle of February, the woman's sacred trouble
came before its time. And on that day there fell such a storm as had not
been seen for many a year. The concession road was blocked before day
had well set in; no horse could go ten yards in it. The nearest doctor
was miles away at Pontiac, and for any man to face the journey was to
connive with death. The old mother came to Uncle Jim, and, as she looked
out of a little unfrosted spot on the window at