looked her awe at this defiant sister. Downstairs she returned to
deliver verbatim Suzanna's message.

Suzanna sat on. From bitter disillusion felt against everything in her
world her mind chilled to analysis. Her mother loved her, she believed,
and yet--she did not complete her swift thought; indeed, she looked
quickly about in fear of her disloyalty. She had once thought that
mothers were perfect, rare beings removed worlds from other mere
mortals. Hadn't she, when a very small girl of four, been quite unable
to comprehend that mother was a mere human being? "Mother is just
mother," she had said in her baby way, and that sentence spelled all the
devotion and admiration of a pure little heart for one enshrined within
it.

And now mother had fallen short. Mother had disappointed that
desperately loving, intense soul. The tears started to her eyes. It was
as though on this second tucked-in day an epoch had come marking the day
for all time, placing it by itself as containing an experience never to
be forgotten.

After a time she realized she was hungry. So she went quietly to the top
of the stairs, but no sound came up from below.

Some clock struck one, and then Suzanna heard running footsteps mounting
the stairs. She sat straight and gazed out of the window. She knew the
moment her mother entered the room, but she did not turn her head.

Mrs. Procter approached until she stood close to Suzanna. She looked
down into the mutinous little face. She had come intending to scold,
but something electric about the child kept hasty words back.

At length: "Aren't you going to speak to me, Suzanna?" she said.

Suzanna did not answer immediately. That strange, awful thought that her
very own mother had been unjustly irritable held her tongue-tied. At
length words, short, curt, came:

"You weren't _all right_ to me this morning, Mother," she said, raising
her stormy eyes. "Yesterday you were nice to me when I was a princess.
Today you were cross because Maizie couldn't understand, and she never
understands. You never were cross about that before." She gazed straight
back into her mother's face--"I'm mad at the whole world."

What perfection the child expects of the mother! No human deviations!
Mrs. Procter sighed. How could she live out her child's exalted ideal of
her! She looked helplessly at Suzanna. The eyes lifted to hers lacked
the wonted expression of perfect belief, of passionate admiration. That
this first littl