a was ambitious, socially, but too lazy to make the effort
necessary for success in that direction.

"I love my family," she would say. "They fill my life. After all,
that's a profession in itself--being a wife and mother."

She showed her devotion by taking no interest whatever in her husband's
land schemes; by forbidding Eugene to play football at school for fear
he might be injured; by impressing Adele with the necessity for
vivacity and modishness because of what she called her unfortunate lack
of beauty.

"I don't understand it," she used to say in the child's presence. "Her
father's handsome enough, goodness knows; and I wasn't such a fright
when I was a girl. And look at her! Little dark skinny thing."

The boy, Eugene, grew up a very silent, handsome, shy young fellow.
The girl, dark, voluble, and rather interesting. The husband, more and
more immersed in his business, was absent from home for long periods
irritable after some of these home-comings; boisterously high-spirited
following other trips. Now growling about household expenses and
unpaid bills; now urging the purchase of some almost prohibitive
luxury. Anyone but a nagging, self-absorbed, and vain woman such as
Flora would have marked these unmistakable signs. But Flora was a
taker, not a giver. She thought herself affectionate because she
craved affection unduly. She thought herself a fond mother because she
insisted on having her children with her, under her thumb, marking
their devotion as a prisoner marks time with his feet, stupidly,
shufflingly, advancing not a step.

Sometimes Sophy, the clear-eyed, seeing this state of affairs, tried to
stop it.

"You expect too much of your husband and children," she said one day,
bluntly, to her sister.

"I!" Flora's dimpled hand had flown to her breast like a wounded
thing. "I! You're crazy! There isn't a more devoted wife and mother
in the world. That's the trouble. I love them too much."

"Well, then," grimly, "stop it for a change. That's half Eugene's
nervousness--your fussing over him. He's eighteen. Give him a chance.
You're weakening him. And stop dinning that society stuff into Adele's
ears. She's got brains, that child. Why, just yesterday, in the
workroom, she got hold of some satin and a shape and turned out a
little turban that Angie Hatton----"

"Do you mean to tell me that Angie Hatton saw my Adele working in your
shop! Now, look here, Sophy. You're earning your