e Mrs. Sherwood
tranquilly.

"Oh, dear, yes! The worst of all!" cried Nan. "The yellow poster is up
at the mills."

"The yellow poster?" repeated her mother doubtfully, not at first
understanding the significance of her daughter's statement.

"Yes. You know. When there's anything bad to announce to the hands
the Atwater Company uses yellow posters, like a small-pox, or typhoid
warning. The horrid thing! The mills shut down in two weeks, Momsey, and
no knowing when they will open again."

"Oh, my dear!" was the little woman's involuntary tribute to the
seriousness of the announcement.

In a moment she was again her usual bright self. She drew Nan closer
to her and her own brown eyes, the full counterpart of her daughter's,
winkled merrily.

"I tell you what let's do, Nan," she said.

"What shall we do, Momsey?" repeated the girl, rather lugubriously.

"Why, let's not let Papa Sherwood know about it, it will make him feel
so bad."

Nan began to giggle at that. She knew what her mother meant. Of course,
Mr. Sherwood, being at the head of one of the mill departments, would
know all about the announcement of the shut-down; but they would keep
up the fiction that they did not know it by being particularly cheerful
when he came home from work.

So Nan giggled and swallowed back her sobs. Surely, if Momsey could
present a cheerful face to this family calamity, she could!

The girl ran her slim fingers into the thick mane of her mother's coiled
hair, glossy brown hair through which only a few threads of white were
speckled.

"Your head feels hot, Momsey," she said anxiously. "Does it ache?"

"A wee bit, honey," confessed Mrs. Sherwood.

"Let me take the pins out and rub your poor head, dear," said Nan. "You
know, I'm a famous 'massagist.' Come do, dear."

"If you like, honey."

Thus it was that, a little later, when Mr. Sherwood came home with feet
that dragged more than usual on this evening, he opened the door upon a
very beautiful picture indeed.

His wife's hair was "a glory of womanhood," for it made a tent all about
her, falling quite to the floor as she sat in her low chair. Out of this
canopy she looked up at the brawny, serious man, roguishly.

"Am I not a lazy, luxurious person, Papa Sherwood?" she demanded.
"Nan is becoming a practical maid, and I presume I put upon the child
dreadfully, she is good-natured, like you, Robert."

"Aye, I know our Nan gets all her good qualities from me, Jessie,"