scott was coming to see her, and she had immediately leaped to
furthest conclusions. Ann Edwards had not a doubt that Lawrence and
Elmira would be married. She had, when it was once awakened, that
highest order of ambition which ignores even the existence of
obstacles.

As Elmira's green skirts fluttered out of sight behind some
lilac-bushes pluming to the wind with purple blossoms Jerome came in,
and his mother turned to him. "I guess Elmira will do about as well
as any of the girls," said she, with her tone of blissful yet
half-vindictive triumph.

Jerome looked at her wonderingly. "Why shouldn't she?" said he.

Immediately Mrs. Edwards put forth her feminine craft like an
involuntary tentacle of protection for her excess of imagination,
against the masculine practicality of her son. Neither she nor Elmira
had said anything about Lawrence Prescott to him; both knew how he
would regard the matter. It seemed to Mrs. Edwards that she had
fairly heard him say: "Marry Doctor Prescott's son! You know better,
mother." Now she, with her Bible on her knees, shunted rapidly the
whole truth behind a half-truth.

"I guess she'll cut full as good a figure in my old silk and her old
bonnet with a new ribbon on it as any of the girls," said she. Then
she added, with a skilful swerve from whole truths and half-truths
alike: "You'd better hurry, Jerome, or you'll be late to meetin'.
Elmira is out of sight, an' the bell's 'most stopped tollin'."

"I am not going this morning," said Jerome.

"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"John Upham sent his oldest boy over here this morning to tell me the
baby's sick. I am going over there and see if I can do anything."

"I should think John Upham had better send for Doctor Prescott
instead of taking you away from meeting."

"You know he won't, mother. I believe he'd let the baby die before he
would. I've got to go there and do the best I can."

"Well, all I've got to say is, he ought to be ashamed of himself if
he'd let his own baby die before he'd call in the doctor, I don't
care how bad he's treated him. I shouldn't wonder if John Upham was
some to blame about that; there's always two sides to a story."

Jerome made no reply. He would have been puzzled several times
lately, had he considered it of sufficient moment, by his mother's
change of attitude towards Doctor Prescott. He went to the
china-closet beside the chimney. On the upper shelves was his
mother's best china tea-set; on th