t of the appealing figure there at home; and toward her
mother Una was very compassionate.

Yes, and so was her mother!

Mrs. Golden liked to sit soft and read stories of young love. Partly by
nature and partly because she had learned that thus she could best
obtain her wishes, she was gentle as a well-filled cat and delicate as a
tulle scarf. She was admiringly adhesive to Una as she had been to
Captain Golden, and she managed the new master of the house just as she
had managed the former one. She listened to dictates pleasantly, was
perfectly charmed at suggestions that she do anything, and then
gracefully forgot.

Mrs. Golden was a mistress of graceful forgetting. Almost never did she
remember to do anything she didn't want to do. She did not lie about it;
she really and quite beautifully did forget.

Una, hurrying off to the office every morning, agonized with the effort
to be on time, always had to stop and prepare a written list of the
things her mother was to do. Otherwise, bespelled by the magazine
stories which she kept forgetting and innocently rereading, Mrs. Golden
would forget the marketing, forget to put the potatoes on to boil,
forget to scrub the bathroom.... And she often contrived to lose the
written list, and searched for it, with trembling lips but no vast
persistence.

Una, bringing home the palsying weariness of the day's drudgery, would
find a cheery welcome--and the work not done; no vegetables for dinner,
no fresh boric-acid solution prepared for washing her stinging eyes.

Nor could Una herself get the work immediately out of the way, because
her mother was sure to be lonely, to need comforting before Una could
devote herself to anything else or even wash away the sticky office
grime.... Mrs. Golden would have been shocked into a stroke could she
have known that while Una was greeting her, she was muttering within
herself, "I do wish I could brush my teeth first!"

If Una was distraught, desirous of disappearing in order to get hold of
herself, Mrs. Golden would sigh, "Dear, have I done something to make
you angry?" In any case, whether Una was silent or vexed with her, the
mother would manage to be hurt but brave; sweetly distressed, but never
quite tearful. And Una would have to kiss her, pat her hair, before she
could escape and begin to get dinner (with her mother helping, always
ready to do anything that Una's doggedly tired mind might suggest, but
never suggesting novelties hersel