t her children back in their expensive schools uptown.

"Why can't she save her money?" he thought. "God knows there's little
enough of it left. But I can't tell her that. If I do she'll sell
everything, hand me the cash and tell me she's sorry to be such a burden.
She'll sit like a thundercloud in my house."

No, he could say nothing to stop her. And over the top of his paper her
father shot a look at her of keen exasperation. Why risk everything she had
to get these needless frills and fads? Why must she cram her life so full
of petty plans and worries and titty-tatty little jobs? For the Lord's
sake, leave their clothes alone! And why these careful little rules for
every minute of their day, for their washing, their dressing, their eating,
their napping, their play and the very air they breathed! He crumpled his
paper impatiently. She was always talking of being old-fashioned. Well
then, why not be that way? Let her live as her grandmother had, up there in
the mountain farmhouse. _She_ had not been so particular. With one hired
girl she had thought herself lucky. And not only had she cooked and sewed,
but she had spun and woven too, had churned and made cheese and pickles and
jam and quilts and even mattresses. Once in two months she had cut Roger's
hair, and the rest of the time she had let him alone, except for something
really worth while--a broken arm, for example, or church. She had stuck to
the essentials!... But Edith was not old-fashioned, nor was she alive to
this modern age. In short, she was neither here nor there!

Then from the nursery above, her smallest boy was heard to cry. With a
little sigh of weariness, quickly she rose and went upstairs, and a few
moments later to Roger's ears came a low, sweet, soothing lullaby. Years
ago Edith had asked him to teach her some of his mother's cradle songs. And
the one which she was singing to-night was a song he had heard when he was
small, when the mountain storms had shrieked and beat upon the rattling old
house and he had been frightened and had cried out and his mother had come
to his bed in the dark. He felt as though she were near him now. And as he
listened to the song, from the deep well of sentiment which was a part of
Roger Gale rose memories that changed his mood, and with it his sense of
proportions.

Here was motherhood of the genuine kind, not orating in Cooper Union in the
name of every child in New York, but crooning low and tenderly, soothing
on