Isa's skill as nurse. In the future, Mrs. Tate was to feel a new
importance. She was assuming the airs of a woman who has learned the
market value of her services. Tate was to reap the effect of this later.

"Oh! It doesn't matter much with boys," Joyce answered, indifferently.
"A girl would have been different."

"That's a sensible way to look at it," Isa agreed. "I often think that a
man with good looks has just that much temptation to be a bigger fool
than what he otherwise would be. It's one agin 'em whichever way you
take it. They don't _need_ looks. They gets what they wants, anyway, and
if they are side-tracked by their countenances, it's ten to one they
will get distracted in their aims, and make more trouble than usual.

"Now that I hark back, the only men as I can remember that amounted to
enough to make you willing to overlook their cussedness, was men as had
a handicap in looks.

"There was Pierre Laval's brother Damon. He was born with twelve toes,
twelve fingers--two extry thumbs they was--and four front teeth.

"He certainly was the most audacious ugly young-un I ever set eyes on. I
wasn't much more than a girl, to be sure, when I saw him first, but I
went into yelling hysterics, and took to my bed. Pierre was
handsome--and, you know how he ended? Damon, he gritted his teeth--and
in his case he could do that early--and made up his mind to make good
for his deficiencies--if you can say that 'bout one as had more rather
than less than Nature generally bestows. Land! the learning that child
was capable of absorbing! Hillcrest School just sunk into him like he
was a sponge. When he got all he could over there, he just walked off
as natural as could be, without a cent to his name--and they do say, so
I've heard, that down the state they set an awful store by his knowledge
of stars and moons and such-like. And Mick Falstar, cousin to Pete--"

"Never mind, Isa." Joyce looked wan and nerveless. These tales only
accentuated the agony she felt whenever she was forced to concentrate
her thoughts upon actualities.

When she was left to herself, she was beginning to regain the power of
ignoring facts and living among ideals. She was growing more and more
able to see a little spiritual baby at her breast--a beautiful child.
And with that vision growing clearer she felt her own spirit gaining
strength for flights into a future where this little son of hers, borne
aloft by her determined will and purpose, should h