en was set to
rights Mrs. Upham went in there, as she was bidden, with the baby,
and sat down in a rocking-chair by the open window towards the road,
through which came a soft green light from some opposite trees, and a
breath of apple-blossoms.

"We've got the room all redd up, Laury," John Upham said, pitifully,
stooping over her and looking into her face. She nodded vaguely,
looking at the baby, who had stopped crying.

Jerome dropped some more medicine, and she took the spoon and fed it
to the baby. "I think it will go to sleep now," said Jerome. Mrs.
Upham looked up at him and almost smiled. Hope was waking within her.
"I think it is nothing but a little cold and feverishness, Mrs.
Upham," Jerome added. He had a great pitiful imagination for this
unknown woe of maternity, which possibly gave him as great a power of
sympathy as actual knowledge.

"You are a good fellow, Jerome, an' I hope I shall be able to do
somethin' to pay you some day," John Upham said, huskily, when they
were in the bedroom putting that also in order.

"I don't want any pay for what I give," Jerome returned.

When Jerome started for home, Mrs. Upham and the baby were both
asleep in the clean bedroom. Retracing his steps along the pleasant
road, he was keenly happy, with perhaps the true happiness of his
life, to which he would always turn at last from all others, and
which would survive the death and loss of all others.

He pictured John Upham's house as he found it and as he left it with
purest self-gratulation. He had not gone far before he heard a clamor
of childish voices; there were two, but they sounded like a troop.
John Upham's twin girls broke through the wayside bushes like little
wild things. Their hands were full of withering flowers. He called
them, and bade them be very still when they went home, so as not to
waken their mother and the baby, and they hung their heads with
bashful assent. They were pretty children in spite of their soiled
frocks, with their little, pink, moist faces and curling crops of
yellow hair.

"If you keep still and don't wake them up, I will bring you both some
peppermints when I come to-morrow," said Jerome. He had nearly
reached the village when he met the two eldest Upham children. They
were boys, the elder twelve, the younger eight, sturdy little
fellows, advancing with a swinging trot, one behind the other, both
chewing spruce-gum. They had been in the woods, on their way home,
for a supply.