and trying
to raise children!" she added, manipulating her flat breast with ringed
fingers to meet the little mouth.

"I wish I could either have the baby nights, or play your parts!"
laughed Martie, reaching lazily for manicure scissors and beginning to
clip her nails, as she sat in a loose, blue kimono opposite the older
woman.

"Dearie, you'll have your own soon enough!" Mabel answered gratefully.
"It won't be so hard long. They get so's they can take care of
themselves very quick. Look at Dette--goodness knows where she's been
ever since she got up. She must of drunk her milk and eaten her
san'wich, because here's the empty glass. She's playing somewhere;
she's all right."

"Oh, sure--she's all right!" Martie said, smiling lazily. And as Leroy
finished his meal she put out her arms. "Come to Aunt Martie, Baby. Oh,
you--cunnin'--little--scrap, you!"

"You'd ought to have one, Mart," said Mabel affectionately.

The wife of a month flushed brightly. With her loosened bronze braid
hanging over her shoulder, her blue eyes soft with happiness, and her
full figure only slightly disguised by the thin nightgown and wrapper
she wore, she looked the incarnation of potent youth and beauty.

"I'd love it," she said, burying her hot cheeks in the little space
between Leroy's fluffy crown and the collar of his soggy little double
gown.

"I love 'em, too," Mabel agreed. "But they cert'ny do tie you down.
Dette was the same way--only I sort of forgot it."

"If this salary was going to keep up, I'd like a dozen of 'em!" Martie
smiled.

"Well, Wallace ought to do well," Mabel conceded. "But of course, you
can't be sure. My idea is to plunge in and HAVE them, regardless.
Things'll fit if they've GOT to."

"That's the NICEST way," Martie said timidly. She had married, knowing
nothing of wifehood and motherhood, except the one fact that the matter
of children must be left entirely to chance. But she did not like to
tell Mabel so.

She sat on in the pleasant morning sunshine, utterly happy, utterly at
ease. The baby went to sleep as the two women murmured together.
Outside the lace-curtained windows busy Geary Street had long been
astir. Wagons rattled up and down; cable-cars clanged. Sunlight had
already conquered the summer fog. It was nine o'clock.

Mabel was enjoying tea and toast, but Martie refused to join her. If
every hour had not been so blissful the young wife would have said that
the happiest time of the day w