aw,
with all her admiration and her dutiful respect, had interests which she
never discussed; had a point of view and ideals which were outside her
comprehension. She felt fatigued and puzzled when she heard the younger
generation's familiar speech with itself. "I am not in it," she said to
herself. Darius, too, no longer consulted her; the old fashion of
confidence had somehow slipped away; he had not very much to say when
they were alone; and he was beginning to call her "Mother." Myrtle Hardy
considered. She thought for weeks and thought hard. She sat in her
sewing-room, up-stairs, where were the only two rocking-chairs that
Myrtie's impeccable taste had allowed to abide in the house. She sat
first in one and then in the other of the chairs, her needlework
unheeded in her lap; and watched her little grandson and his sister
playing while the nurse made an interminable German lace on the back
porch; and just across from her window, Hester, her daughter-in-law, sat
amid a heap of books, reading and making notes. "That child has been
studying for three months, every spare moment, on her paper about
'Scientific Plumbing in the Modern Mansion.'" Mrs. Hardy muttered, with
a frown, "well, I hope she will know something, if she keeps her mind!
That was not the way we prepared club papers in my day; we decided on
our subjects one meeting and we read our essays on them the next; and
two weeks was enough for us; now, they spend a half year making a
programme and have it hanging over them a year in advance." She watched
her daughter-in-law, smiling grimly; then, suddenly, she rose, with the
motion of one who has come to a decision. "At least they are not
superficial, nowadays," she said, "and perhaps it is better to take
one's self too seriously than not seriously enough. And after all,
Hester did find out what was the matter with the laundry faucets."

One day she told her daughter-in-law that she wanted to join a class in
parliamentary law.

"But we haven't any," objected Mrs. Darius Hardy, Jr., meekly.

"Then get up one," said the one time president of clubs. "Get all you
can to join a class, send for a teacher, and I will make up the deficit,
in the subscription list."

A parliamentary teacher of renown came. She was also a teacher of
expression--that was her poetical word. Hester caught her breath the
first time her mother-in-law rose in the class to "speak to the motion."
She embraced her with beaming eyes and the prett