roduct were to be acknowledged.

"There!" Mary cried at last. "See it--can't you see it?--in gray wool?"

It was the pattern for a boy's topcoat, cunningly cut in new lines of
seam and revers, with a pocket, a bit of braid, a line of buttons laid
in as delicately as the factors in any other good composition. Mis'
Winslow inevitably recognized its utility, exclaimed, and wondered.

"Mary Chavah! How did you know how to do things for children?"

"How did you know how?" Mary inquired coolly.

"Why, I've had 'em," Mis' Winslow offered simply.

"Do you honestly think that makes any difference?" Mary asked.

Mis' Winslow gasped, in the immemorial belief that the physical basis of
motherhood is the guarantee of both spiritual and physical equipment.

"Could you have cut out that coat?" Mary asked.

Mis' Winslow shook her head. She was of those whose genius is for
cutting over.

"Well," said Mary, "I could. It ain't having 'em that teaches you to do
for 'em. You either know how, or you don't know how. That's all."

Mis' Winslow reflected that she could never make Mary understand--though
any mother, she thought complacently, would know in a minute. The
cutting of the coat did give her pause; but then, she summed it up,
coat included, "Mary was queer"--and let it go at that.

"I didn't know," Mis' Winslow said then, "but what I could help you some
about the little boy's coming. Seven-under-fifteen does teach you
something, you've got to allow. Mebbe I could tell you something, now
and then. Or if we could do anything to help you get ready for him...."

"Oh," said Mary, in swift penitence, "thank you, Mis' Winslow. After he
comes, maybe. But these things now I don't mind doing. The real
nuisance'll come afterwards, I s'pose."

Mis' Winslow smiled in soft triumph.

"_Nuisance!_" she said. "That's what I meant comes to you by having 'em.
You don't think so much of the nuisance part as you did before."

"Then you don't look the thing in the face," said Mary, calmly. "That's
all about that."

"Well," Mis' Winslow said pacifically, "when's he coming?"

"A week from Tuesday. A week from to-morrow," Mary told her.

Mis' Winslow looked at her intently, with the light of calculation in
her narrowed eyes.

"A week from Tuesday," she said. "A week from Tuesday," she repeated.
"_A week from Tuesday!_" she exclaimed. "Why, Mary Chavah. That's
Christmas Eve."

It was some matter of recipes that was absorbing Mis' Bates a