ight to answer back that way and take vengeance on
people."

"Well, there, Cloudy, let's lay that subject on the table for some of
our night talks; and you can scold us all you like. We have a lot of
work to do now, and let's forget the old pry. Now you lie down on that
couch where I put you, and Leslie and I'll wash these dishes."

Julia Cloud lay obediently on the couch, but her mind was not at rest.
She was in a tumult of indignation at her prying neighbor and an
uncertainty of anxiety about Ellen and what she might do next. But
beneath it all was a vague fear about these her dear children who were
about to become her responsibility. Could she do it? Dared she do it?
How differently they had been brought up from all the traditions which
had controlled her life!

Take, for instance, that matter of Christianity. How would they feel
about it? Would they be in sympathy with her ideas and ideals of right
and wrong? They were no longer little children to obey her. They would
have ideas of their own, yes, and ideals. Would there be constant
clashing? Would she be haunted with a feeling that she was not doing
her duty by them? There were so many such questions, amusements, and
Sabbath, and churchgoing, and how to treat other people. And doubtless
she was old-fashioned, and they would chafe under her rule.

Take the little matter of Leslie's calling Mrs. Perkins a cat. She
_was_ a cat, but Leslie ought not to have told her so. It wasn't
polite, and it wasn't Christian. And yet how could she, plain Julia
Cloud, who had never been anywhere much outside of her home town, who
had had no opportunity for study or wide reading, and who had only
worked quietly all her life, and thought her plain little thoughts of
love to God and to her neighbors, be able to explain all those things
to this pair of lovable, uncontrolled children, who had always had
their own way, and whose ideals were the ideals of the great wide
unchristian world?

A little pucker grew between her brows, and a tired, troubled tear
stole softly between her lashes. When the children, tiptoeing about
and whispering, came to peek in at the door and see whether she was
asleep, they discovered her expression at once, and, drawing near,
sighted the tear. Then they went down upon their knees beside her
couch, and noisily demanded the cause thereof.

Little by little they drew her fears from her.

"Why, Cloudy, dear! We'll do what you want. We'll let all the old cats