hourly the bread of suggestion and
anticipation on the unthankful waters, whence it invariably returned to
her sodden with repinings. The young ladies set their grievances up on
high and bowed the knee; they were not going to be comforted, nor
pleased, nor hopeful, not they. The scheme was abominable, and no
aspect in which it could be presented rendered its abomination less;
they were hopeless, and helpless, and oppressed, and there was the end
of it.

Poor Mrs. Smith wished it might be the end, or anywhere near the end;
for the soul within her was "vexed with strife and broken in pieces
with words." The general could--and did--escape the rhetorical
consequences of his unpopular measure, but his wife could not: no club
afforded her its welcome refuge, no "down town" offered her sanctuary.
She was obliged to stay at home and endure it all. Norma's sulks,
Blanche's tears, the rapture of the boys--hungering for novelty as boys
only can hunger--the useless and trivial suggestions of friends, the
minor arrangements for the move, the decision on domestic questions
present and to come, the questions, answers, futile conjectures, all
formed a murk through which she labored, striving to please her husband
and her children, to uphold authority, quell mutiny, soothe murmurs,
and sympathize with enthusiasm; with a tact which shamed diplomacy, and
a patience worthy of an evangelist.

After the indulgent American custom, she earnestly desired to please
_all_ of her children. In her own thoughts she existed only for them,
to minister to their happiness; even her husband was, unconsciously to
her, quite of secondary importance, his strongest present claim to
consideration lying in his paternity. Had it been possible, she would
have raised her tent, and planted her fig tree in the spot preferred by
each one of her children, but as that was out of the question, in the
mother's mind of course her sons came first. And this preference must
be indulged the more particularly that Warner--the elder of her two
boys, her idol and her grief--was slowly, well-nigh imperceptibly, but
none the less surely, drifting away from her. A boyish imprudence, a
cold, over-exertion, the old story which is so familiar, so hopeless,
so endless in its repetition and its pathos. When interests were
diverse, the healthy, blooming daughters could hope to make little
headway against the invalid son. _They_ had all the sunny hours of
many long years bef