a wide strip of crocheted lace.
"It's 'most done now. It's go'n' to be a bedspread for Ena. But I
don't know if she---"

Mrs. Rolls did not finish the sentence, but it was a long, long ago
established custom of hers not to finish sentences. Except when alone
with Petro, she seldom made any attempt to bring one to an end. It was
life at Peter senior's side which had got her out of the habit of
trying to complete what she began to say. As he generally interrupted
her when she spoke, even in their early years together, she had almost
unconsciously taken it for granted that he would do so, and stopped
like a rundown mechanical doll at about the place where her
quick-minded husband was due to break in.

Peter junior, who never interrupted (though he, too, had a quick
mind), knew as well as if she had gone on that his mother meant: "I
don't know if Ena will think a homemade coverlet of crocheted lace
smart enough for a real, live _marchesa_, but I feel I should like to
make my daughter some bridal present with my own hands."

"Oh, yes, she's certain to. It'll be beautiful, if it's anything like
the one you did for me," Petro assured her when the long pause had
told him that mother had no more to add. "Just think of Ena getting
married!"

"Yes, indeed," sighed Mrs. Rolls. "And it seems only a little while
since you were both---"

Peter knew that the missing word was "children." "Anyhow, she's happy,
I think," he reflected aloud, a far-away look in his eyes.

"I guess so," mother agreed. "She'll like real well being a--- I
wish---"

"_Marchesa"_ was easy for Peter to supply mentally, and would have
been much easier for him to pronounce than it was for Mrs. Rolls, who
had had small education in the management even of her native tongue.

She made dear little, cozy, common mistakes in grammar and other
things. Peter adored her mistakes, and Ena was ashamed of them. But in
those good manners which are taught by the heart and not by the head,
no queen could have given Mrs. Rolls lessons.

As for the next sentence, beginning with "I wish---" and ending in the
air, that was more difficult. Even mother, so placid, seemingly so
contented, must have many wishes. And so Petro ventured on a "What?"

"I wisht I could be just as sure _you_---"

"As sure that I'm happy?"

"Yes, dear."

Peter had been looking at his mother's feet in those blue Japanese
slippers, whose cheapness was rather pathetic. (With all their money,
she