Washington--it would have been the making of me! It meant a lot of
money, too. I came home to ask Pop to stake me to money enough to live
on until it was finished."

"My business will go to smash! I'll be saddled with debts for the rest
of my life. If I could have hung on a little longer I'd have reached the
shore; but the bank wouldn't lend me a cent. Nobody would. I came home
to ask Pop to raise me some cash. I counted on him. He never failed me
before."

"What will become of us all?"

There was a stir on the pillow. The still head began to rock, the throat
to swell, the lips to twitch.

_Mere_ ran to the bedside and knelt by it, laying her hand on the
forehead. A miracle had been wrought in the very texture of his brow.
He was whispering something. She put her ear to his lips.

"Yes, honey. What is it? I'm here."

She caught the faint rustling of words. It was as if his hovering soul
had been eavesdropping on their thoughts. Perhaps it was merely that he
had learned so well in all these years just what each of them would be
thinking. For he murmured:

"I've been figuring out--how much the--funeral will cost--you know
they're awful expensive--funerals are--of course I wouldn't want
anything fancy--but--well--besides--and I've been thinking the children
have got to have so many things--I can't afford to--be away from the
store any longer. I ain't got time to die! I've had vacation enough!
Where's my clothes at?"

They held him back. But not for long. He was the most irritatingly
impatient of convalescents. In due course of time the family was
redistributed about the face of the earth. Ethelwolf was at preparatory
school; Beatrice and Consuelo were acquiring and lending luster at
Wellesley and Vassar; Gerald was painting a portrait at Washington; and
J. Pennock was like a returned Napoleon in Wall Street.

Pop was at his desk in the store. All his employees had gone home. He
was fretfully twiddling a telegram from San Francisco:

Julie's address sublime please telegraph two hundred more love

MERE.

Pop was remembering the words of the address: "Woman has been for ages
man's mere beast of burden.... Being a wife has meant being a slave."

Pop could not understand it yet. But he told everybody he met about the
first three words of the telegram, and added:

"I got the smartest children that ever was and they owe it all to their
mother, every bit."

BABY TALK

I

The wisest thing Prof. Stuar