personally superintended, and she brought to her
passion for poetry some critical acumen.

She finally selected a song of the Gloucester fishermen she had
written two years before--a song of toil and death--but with a refrain
that effaced the terror with the dance of summer seas. She wrote a
formal note to the editor, saying the price was fifteen dollars, that
if accepted the signature was to be Gerald Shelton, and the check to
be made to her, and she signed her own name. Simeon should know as
soon as he came home, but she thought he could have no objection to
Geraldine Ponsonby accepting a check for the supposititious Gerald
Shelton.

Before all this was accomplished, her servant had gone to bed and
Deena, afraid to be left alone downstairs in a house so prone to
spooky noises, followed her example, but alas! not to sleep. She
tossed on her bed, sacred for many years to the ponderous weight of
old Mrs. Ponsonby, till suddenly all she had suffered from the maxims
and example of her mother-in-law took form, and she wove a story half
humorous, half pathetic, that she longed to commit to paper; but her
delicacy forbade. She was even ashamed to have found a passing
amusement at the expense of Simeon's mother, and she tried to make her
mind a blank and go to sleep. Toward morning she must have lost
consciousness, for she dreamed--or thought she dreamed--that old Mrs.
Ponsonby sat in her hard wooden rocking-chair by the window--the chair
with the patchwork cushion fastened by three tape bows to the ribs of
its back; the chair Simeon had often told her was "mother's favorite."
The old lady rocked slowly, and her large head and heavy figure were
silhouetted against the transparent window shade. A sound of wheels
came from the street, and she raised the shade and looked out, leaning
back, in order to follow the disappearing object till it was out of
range, and then she buried her face in her hands and sobbed the low,
hopeless sobs of old-age.

Deena found herself sitting up in bed, the early daylight making "the
casement slowly grow a glimmering square." The impression of her dream
was so vivid that the depression weighed upon her like something
physical. It was impossible to sleep, and at seven o'clock she got up
to dress, having heard the servant go downstairs. On her way to her
bath she passed the rocking-chair, and lying directly in her path was
a little card, yellow with age. Deena picked it up and read: "From
Mother to