liked to have men courting her
and ready to fight one another for a kind word from her. That's
nature. But it ain't nature to have it last, Mis' Sinclair. And
that's where you made your mistake. You wanted to keep right on
pretending it was May after it got along to August or so."

Something she saw in the poor harassed face caused her to change her
position slightly, so that she could pat the listless hand of Diantha's
mother while she spoke.

"Life ain't cruel, you poor soul! It comes along with both hands full.
It says to the little girl, 'Come, drop that doll-baby, I've got
something better than that. Here's a lover for you.' And then it says
to the girl that's picking and choosing among her beaux, 'Drop that
flirting, I've got something better for you. Here's a husband and a
home!' And so it goes. Instead of getting poorer all the time, we're
getting richer."

She looked at Annabel tentatively. She was not altogether sure that
her eloquence was having effect. But as Annabel sat in an attitude of
expectancy, her face turned toward her monitor, though her eyes were
downcast, Persis tried again.

"I don't say Thomas and I haven't missed a lot, I'm not belittling
youth and its love and its hopes. But I do say that I wouldn't change
this last year of my life for any that might have been. Why, when I
wake up in the morning, my head's full of the children, thinking of 'em
and planning for 'em and sometimes worrying about 'em. It needs a
little tart taste, sometimes, to bring out the sweet. Thomas and I
have spent hours, trying to decide whether we'll make a doctor out of
Algie, or a civil engineer, and we know both of us, that when the time
comes, he'll take the bit in his teeth and do as he likes. Only it's
such fun planning it out. When I look back five years or ten, or
twenty, for that matter, and see how my life has filled up and widened
out, I feel real sorry for that little, young, silly Persis Dale who
thought she was so happy and knew so little about it. If life takes
with one hand, Mis' Sinclair, it gives with two, only you'll never find
it out as long as you grip tight to what you've got."

She looked down on the bundle in her arms, and again her face was
irradiated by a vivid tenderness, almost as if she had been mother of
the child.

"Now, here's a case in point, Annabel Sinclair. Right here in my arms
is a little lump of joy that ought to fill up your cup of happiness so
full that