smile. "I know she's there.
But we're going to her now, and it's all right. Peter and I have been
talking it over. I saw her there, Mary, and it was like a blow! SHE'S
not the one who must suffer for all this. Peter and I are going to
start all over again, and settle our troubles without hurting a woman;
aren't we, Peter?"

The little boy nodded, with his eyes fixed on his father's.

"So the episode is closed, Mary," said Sidney, simply. "And the next
time--if there is a next time!--Peter shall make his own decision, and
abide by what it brings. The mug goes back to its place to-night,
and--and we're going to tell mother that she never need watch and wait
and worry about us again!"

They turned to the steps; but, as the boy ran ahead, Sidney came back
to say in a lower tone:

"I--it may be weakness, Mary, but I can't have Jean doing what--what
SHE did, you know! I tried to give the boy some idea, just now, of the
responsibility of it. Nobody spared my grandmother, but Jean SHALL be
spared, if I never try to control him or save him from himself again!"

"Ah, Sidney," Mary said, "you have done more, in taking him into your
confidence, than any amount of punishing could do!"

"Well, we'll see!" he said, with a weary little shrug. "I must go to
Jeanie now."

As he mounted the steps, Peter reappeared in the darkened doorway. The
child looked like a little knight, with his tawny loose mop of hair and
short tunic, and the uplifted look in his lovely eyes.

"Shall we go to her now, Dad?" said the little treble gallantly. And,
as the boy came close to Sidney's side, Mary saw the silver mug glitter
in his hand.

MAKING ALLOWANCES FOR MAMMA

At the head of her own breakfast table,--a breakfast table charmingly
littered with dark-blue china and shining glass, and made springlike by
a great bowl of daisies,--Mary Venable sat alone, trying to read her
letters through a bitter blur of tears. She was not interested in her
letters, but something must be done, she thought desperately, to check
this irresistible impulse to put her head down on the table and cry
like a child, and uninteresting letters, if she could only force her
eyes to follow the lines of them, and her brain to follow the meaning,
would be as steadying to the nerves as anything else.

Cry she would NOT; for every reason. Lizzie, coming in to carry away
the plates, would see her, for one thing. It would give her a blazing
headache, for another. It wo