iest rose of delight on
her cheeks. "Oh, how did you learn it?" she sighed, happily, "you are
the best of us all!"

"I took some private lessons in Chicago," said Mrs. Hardy--her quiet
manner did not betray an unexpected thrill.

"You're _beautiful_!" cried Hester.

After that, Hester always seconded her mother-in-law's motions; and
fought in the mimic debates as valiantly on her side as a natural
reticence would let her. It was odd (to Mrs. Hardy) what a different
relation grew up between them; a sense of comradeship and the pleasures
of partisanship, wherein it is not only the leader who exults in the
winning fray, the follower has a simpler and a nobler joy. The first
natural consequence of Hester's admiration was that she begged her
mother-in-law to join her club. Before the end of the year, Mrs. Hardy
was elected president of the club; before the end of the next year, she
was burrowing in books and magazines, as absorbed as Hester, in the
conduct of Great Britain to her colonies. She found herself suddenly
interested in the newspapers; Darrie talked politics with her; and they
were no longer unintelligible.

"Whew, isn't mother getting cultivated!" Darius whispered to his boy;
and they both grinned.

"She's growing handsomer, too," said Darius the younger.

"I hope she won't go to any of those fakirs in the newspapers who paint
you all over, so's you crack when you laugh," commented Darius,
anxiously, "and, say, Darrie, there's a way they have, nowadays, of
burning off your skin and giving you a new skin--they call it being
'_done over_'; it must be frightful torture--I'm not going to have your
mother's face sizzled up, that fashion."

"She doesn't need it; mother's skin is lovely," said the loyal son.

"Her not needing it is no reason why she won't want it--being a
woman--Darrie. Your mother is the most sensible woman in the world,
Darrie; but she's a woman. And I'm not sure whether a woman ought to
monkey with her age, the way mother is doing. What do you suppose I saw
with my own eyes, yesterday? There was mother, swinging her arms over
her head and bowing like a heathen Chinee, until her slender fingers
touched the floor; and then she went to kicking over the chairs--high
kicks!"

"Oh, that's only Delsarte--they only do that to limber up and make
themselves graceful. Hetty can kick the chandelier."

Myrtle caught echoes of this conversation; and was base enough to listen
behind her sewing-room curt