* * *

As she busied herself unpacking the trunks, Edith strove to readjust her
plans. By noon her head was throbbing, but she took little notice of that.
She had a talk with Hannah, the devoted Irish girl who had been with her
ever since George was born. It was difficult, it was brutal. It was almost
as though in Edith's family there had been two mothers, and one was sending
the other away.

"There, there, poor child," Edith comforted her, "I'll find you another
nice family soon where you can stay till I take you back. Don't you see it
will not be for long?" And Hannah brightened a little.

"But how in the wide wurrld," she asked, "will you ever do for the
children, me gone?"

"Oh, I'll manage," said Edith cheerfully. And that afternoon she began at
once to rearrange her whole intricate schedule, with Hannah and school both
omitted, to fit her children into the house. But instead of this, as the
days wore on, nerve-racking days of worry and toil, sternly and quite
unconsciously she fitted the house to her children. And nobody made her
aware of the fact. All summer long in the mountains, everyone by tacit
consent had made way for her, had deferred to her grief in the little
things that make up the everyday life in a home. And to this precedent once
established Edith now clung unawares.

Her new day gave her small time to think. It began at five in the morning,
when Roger was awakened by the gleeful cries of the two wee boys who slept
with their mother in the next room, the room which had been Deborah's. And
Edith was busy from that time on. First came the washing and dressing and
breakfast, which was a merry, boisterous meal. Then the baby was taken out
to his carriage on the porch at the back of the house. And after that, in
her father's study from which he had fled with his morning cigar, for two
hours Edith held school for her children, trying her best to be patient and
clear, with text-books she had purchased from their former schools uptown.
For two severe hours, shutting the world all out of her head, she tried to
teach them about it. At eleven, their nerves on edge like her own, she sent
them outdoors "to play," intrusting the small ones to Betsy and George, who
took them to Washington Square nearby with strict injunctions to keep them
away from all other children. No doubt there were "nice" children there,
but she herself could not be along to distinguish the "nice" from the
"common"--for unt