re all tiny, tumbling about me, and climbing into my lap.... Why,
you love children, dear," she finished, with a shade of reproach in
her voice, as Margaret still looked sober.

"Yes, I know, Mother," Margaret said. "But Julie's only got the one
maid, and I don't suppose they can have another. I hope to goodness Ju
won't get herself all run down!"

Her mother laughed. "You remind me of Grandma Paget," said she,
cheerfully; "she lived ten miles away when we were married, but she
came in when Bruce was born. She was rather a proud, cold woman
herself, but she was very sweet to me. Well, then little Charlie came,
fourteen months later, and she took that very seriously. Mother was
dead, you know, and she stayed with me again, and worried me half sick
telling me that it wasn't fair to Bruce and it wasn't fair to Charlie
to divide my time between them that way. Well, then when my third baby
was coming, I didn't dare tell her. Dad kept telling me to, and I
couldn't, because I knew what a calamity a third would seem to her!
Finally she went to visit Aunt Rebecca out West, and it was the very
day she got back that the baby came. She came upstairs--she'd come
right up from the train, and not seen any one but Dad; and he wasn't
very intelligible, I guess--and she sat down and took the baby in her
arms, and says she, looking at me sort of patiently, yet as if she
was exasperated too: 'Well, this is a nice way to do, the minute my back's
turned! What are you going to call him, Julia?' And I said,
'I'm going to call her Margaret, for my dear husband's mother, and
she's going to be beautiful and good, and grow up to marry the
President!'" Mrs. Paget's merry laugh rang out. "I never shall
forget your grandmother's face."

"Just the same," Mrs. Paget added, with a sudden deep sigh, "when
little Charlie left us, the next year, and Brucie and Dad were both so
ill, she and I agreed that you--you were just talking and trying to
walk--were the only comfort we had! I could wish my girls no greater
happiness than my children have been to me," finished Mother,
contentedly.

"I know," Margaret began, half angrily; "but what about the children?"
she was going to add. But somehow the arguments she had used so
plausibly did not utter themselves easily to Mother, whose children
would carry into their own middle age a wholesome dread of her anger.
Margaret faltered, and merely scowled.

"I don't like to see that expression on your face, dearie,