Children of the wind : a novel

Front matter

* x i 3 ay Re Msi

By Doris Peel

THis is the first novel of a young woman who is nineteen years old. It is not the usual thing in first novels; neither smart, nor startling. Its achievement is that rarest of things in any novel, that almost unheard-of thing in a first novel — true penetration and understanding.

Chapter One

I THE day of Mrs. Landor’s garden-party was quite perfect from the first wisp of a beginning. It opened with a wide, pale sky and a white moon traced thinly in the west, and a little later there were billows and billows of coral and primrose, and by mid-morning the whole world seemed radiant and heavy with gold.

‘A trifle warm ...’ suggested Mr. Landor.

‘Oh, zo, dear,’ reproved Mrs. Landor. A trifle warm, indeed! It was quite perfect.

Mr. Landor withdrew his suggestion hurriedly as befitted one who had made an unfortunate mistake. ‘Certainly, m’love!’ He mopped his face and plodded through the afternoon with an air of studied enjoyment.

Mrs. Landor’s garden-parties were always very charming, always very successful. She had a certain flair for them, other ladies were wont to remark — envy politely glossed over with admiration. Somehow she could catch just the right note of leisurely gayety, so elusive, and yet so essential. And then, of course, there were the refreshments. It was whispered that she made them herself: the little frosted orange cakes the color of ripe apricots, and the golden cheese wafers, and the cherry tarts sprayed with sweet cocoanut, and the water-cress sandwiches that never became moist or wilted...

Perhaps she did — and perhaps she didn’t. At times Mrs. Landor was blandly inscrutable!

On this sixth day of August everything was swinging ahead with the regularity and smoothness of a well-organized band. The wide lawn, walled with shrubbery, sloped away into the rock-garden with its shallow stone steps and creeping baby’s breath and the white and pink shells which Mrs. Landor had so energetically collected on a brief visit to the sea. (The biggest ones, all creamy flutes outside and shining rose within, she kept on the parlor mantelpiece for decorative purposes and for the amusement of her seven little nieces who used them, more or less indiscriminately, for boats and houses and dishes and hills in a game of vast pretense.)

Against the shrubbery flamed tiger-lilies like spurts of orange fire, and purple-blue phlox, and dahlias in every shade from bronze and copper and buff to scarlet and honey-yellow. Little green tables with spidery legs, and little green chairs that had to be sat in squarely to be prevented from tipping, studded the whole of the rolling lawn; and over by the laburnum bushes, under a white-and-cherry-striped awning, the orchestra (only five pieces, but very sprightly and with such a handsome violinist) was playing graceful, familiar airs which rose faintly above the chattering like a high, wavering wind.

There was a great deal of chattering, about this and that — the latest triumph of Madam Nordica; the possible return of chignons and waterfalls (‘Oh, my dear, do you really think so! I look such a fright . . . the shape of one’s head, I think, don’t you?...’); Hall Caine’s new book (‘So touching, darling, I cried and cried. Yes, really!...’); the bicycle craze, the new flowing draperies ... A hundred little threads of life, pleasant, inconsequential.

Mrs. Landor’s guests drifted leisurely about among the small green tables like the slow, constant eddy of a colored pool. There were tall, willowy ladies and short, stubby ladies, in flowered batistes, in ciel-blue faille, in pale rose-flushed taffeta flounced and foaming with lace; ladies with enormous box-sleeves and flaring skirts, with little chiffon-ruffled parasols like scalloped flowers, and the new silk and tulle bonnets set off with pert velvet bows. There were gowns of pink and cream and mauve and apricot, ruffled and buckled and pleated and fringed and embroidered. Against all their voluminous splendor the gentlemen were but streaks of somberness. ...

Nellie Pettingil slipped out of the whirl of lace and chattering and flopped into a secluded seat with a sigh of relief. She rubbed her feet together and said ‘Ouch!’ very softly. The new shoes — white kid with tiny square buckles — were darling. (Mary had remarked upon them no less than four times!) But they did pinch, there was no getting away from that.

She stretched them out in front of her with a frankly complacent air. Nice trim little feet — and nice trim little shoes! Ankles, too, very slender and silken — only ankles were rather more private. She ran her fingers along the crisp freshness of her frock. It was new, of course; apple-green crepon sprayed with pink poppies, and with a vest of finetucked cream mull which framed the whiteness and softness of Nellie Pettingil’s throat most becomingly....

She tilted back her head in the warm flow of sunshine. How lovely it all was: new shoes, a new frock, and a hat almost new! How wonderfully lovely to be at a party with people laughing and chattering in high, gay voices, with music streaming from under a brightly striped awning, sunshine, sparkle, and a crisp new frock that suited you... Oh, very well!

She wiggled her toes to ease the cramped feeling, the poppy-sprayed skirt lifted a little.

It was then that Winnie Landor appeared, piloting Roger Blythe about with nervous elation.

‘Mercy!’ exclaimed Winnie, fanning herself with a good deal of energy. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere, darey Children of the Wind ling, simply everywhere!’ Her tone implied that she had scoured the earth.

Nellie dropped her feet hastily into place, her larkspur-blue eyes lifted to Roger Blythe...

Winnie introduced them. Winnie loved introducing people — for some inexplicable reason it always made her feel important. ‘Darling, Mr. Blythe — I mean, Miss Pettingil, Nellie darling — Mr. Blythe!’ (A trifle muddled as usual.) Her long nose was working with excitement like a rabbit’s. After all, it wasn’t every day that one was called upon to present to one’s best friend a famous and handsome (or almost handsome) radical editor, lauded and maligned in varying degrees from one end of the country to the other! (Winnie was, unfortunately, given to gross exaggeration.) ‘He’s an editor, darling!’ she imparted in a loud aside.

Nellie inclined her head very gracefully, a sort of downward and upward swoop which she had perfected after long and arduous practice before Aunt Harriet’s oval mirror. She looked very cool and trim and serene — and she was wondering if she ought to stand up to greet an editor.

‘Such a sweet day!’ observed Winnie breathlessly. ‘Mamma did so hope it wouldn't rain. Aren’t you glad it didn’t Farm, darling?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Nellie.

Roger Blythe turned to her, politeness barely veiling boredom. ‘You have appropriated the most charming spot in the garden, Miss Pettingil; I hope you don’t mind our shar ing it with you?’

‘Mercy, no!’ And then, as an after-thought: ‘It isn’t my garden, you know.’ (All Nellie’s after-thoughts were cast in the explanatory mould.)

Winnie’s roaming eye caught sight of some one across the lawn by the gay splash of awning. ‘Gracious! Mamma’s beckoning to me,’ in a palpitating tone. ‘What do you suppose she wants, darling?’ with an air of great anxiety. ‘I do wonder what she wants...’

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Mr. Blythe, ‘you had better go and see.’

‘Well, now, perhaps I had. There, she is beckoning me! You don’t mind, darling...you quite understand...’ With one vast, final flutter she darted across the lawn, her violet taffeta rustling and shuffling like a scurry of dried leaves.

Roger gave the remotest sigh of relief and seated himself. “How sweet the sudden calm,’ he murmured.

Nellie looked at him through drooping black lashes, a little awe-struck, but quite at ease. He was tall and slouchy with an odd, crooked smile, half-whimsical and half-bitter. It was a smile that Nellie couldn’t understand. There were so many funny little things that Nellie couldn’t understand!

Across the wide lawn people wandered about leisurely and aimlessly, the rose and lavender and saffron of swishing gowns making blurs of color against the sweep of greengold. Winnie, released from her mamma, and Mary, flushed and lovely, had disappeared into the rock-garden. And now Edgar Potter and the tubby Mr. Picklebaum were edging casually over in the same direction. In the rock-garden it was very quiet ...and secluded...

Beyond the edge of the eddying pool, Roger Blythe leaned forward a little, hands in pockets. And Nellie Pettingil, sitting straight and demure in her apple-green gown with sunshine and flowery breezes all about her, became suddenly aware of a long silence — a rather lovely silence.

She glanced up and her clear, larkspur-blue eyes met . Roger Blythe’s. He smiled, that odd, crooked smile of his, and suddenly the flowery breezes blew through and through Nellie Pettingil until she felt like a swaying blossom, like a flying bubble, high, very high in the sky, and full of nothing but light.

2 Aunt Harriet and Nellie Pettingil and Mr. Roger Blythe were walking home from Mrs. Landor’s garden-party in the late of the afternoon.

‘It’s so near,’ explained Aunt Harriet a trifle heavily. (There, she had gone and eaten too much again; she was wedged quite full of frosted orange cakes and cress sandwiches. She did hope that little worn place in her corset string wouldn’t give out suddenly.) ‘So near,’ she repeated, drawing in her breath to aid the corset string, ‘and really not worth while using the carriage, do you think so?’ (There, her breath was out again with a pop — how provoking!) ‘And little walks, especially in the summer, are so nice, don’t you think so? Splendid exercise and most helpful for the appetite, don’t you think so?’

Mercy, what was the matter with them; why didn’t they perk up and answer a person! It wasn’t comfortable to have to create all the conversation just after one had eaten too heavily. She wished this Mr. Blythe (a nice man, but still, a man) wasn’t with them. Then they could get behind a tree and Nellie could thump her back. That always helped! She trusted that she wouldn’t break out into hiccoughs before they reached home and the sugar bowl. Aunt Harriet had great faith in the efficacy of sugar. She sucked it for everything, lots of it, little pyramids of glistening white squares. ‘You'll ruin your figure, dear,’ Mrs. Potter would remark apprehensively. But Aunt Harriet was obstinate. She would rather have her sugar than her figure.

‘A lovely day,’ she observed without enthusiasm. ‘Don’t you think so?’ She nudged Nellie’s soft, creamy arm with the carved handle of her parasol. ‘Talk, dearie,’ she encouraged.

Nellie looked up and flushed very pink under the green shadow of her hat. ‘Oh, a lovely day,’ she said in a trilling, breathless voice. ‘A lovely day...’

Children of the Wind ”

Wavering breezes, cool channels for the thousand fragrances of a thousand summer flowers; nothing anywhere in all her world but sunshine and garden-sweetness. ‘Oh, a lovely day...’

Aunt Harriet began to puff a little, her large, flat face purpled and moistened with the heat.

That night Nellie Pettingil lay very still in her narrow white bed. Outside, over the tousled heads of the maples, floated the misty silver of a swollen moon. The muslin curtains foamed dimly about the window holding the night and the star-spangled sky as a picture, an old and most lovely picture.

Nellie Pettingil lay very still. She felt light and empty as a bubble floating with the moon, empty and yet full of wonder. ‘I have fallen in love,’ she thought tremulously, and all her thoughts went singing and wandering away.

How lovely life is! mused Nellie Pettingil. How beautiful and smooth and uncomplicated! One fell in love, one married, one had babies; all perfectly orderly and pleasant. A neat little plan — Life! She was dimly aware that occasionally the plan went awry; that occasionally things were hurt and broken and crushed. But that must be because, as in the poem they learned at Miss Randolph’s School, ‘some one had blundered.’ If one didn’t meddle, didn’t interfere with the scheme, everything would go along calmly and logically. Just drifting down a wide stream, a pleasant stream, that was all.

Nellie Pettingil was not really surprised — she had always known that it would happen some time. It was what one grew for, what one lived for! ‘I am in love.’ And all the silver-fretted night was full of singing thoughts.

Roger Blythe heard them too; Roger Blythe, who found the world such a muddled, foolish place, heard singing thoughts in the night.

3 NELLIE and Roger Blythe were married at the end of Octeber upon a day of tranquil skies and long, cool winds.

It was Roger who carried it all through with such breathless and bewildering haste. Nellie held back; she didn’t like being hurried. She wanted to wait a while, to loiter in this sweet prelude knowing that the future was all planned and provided for. She wanted to extract every little bit of happiness from this first stage before she passed on to the second. It was the natural thing to do. In life one should move leisurely, pleasantly, so that there were no sudden jolts and jars, but only a careful blending of one experience into another. That was how it should go; and it was much wiser, much more satisfying to follow the normal course in this, as in all other things.

‘Let’s wait until some time in the spring,’ she suggested. ‘June, perhaps, with the roses. It’s such a sweet month, dear, and more — well, more appropriate.’

Roger laughed, such a clear and careless laugh. ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Why wait? You love me now, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Nellie Pettingil in a shining voice. ‘Oh, yes, Roger.’

And for a moment the dim, old garden was full of singing thoughts.

Aunt Harriet was the first to be told. (That was duty.) And Winnie Landor was the second. (That was pleasure.)

Winnie was overcome with astonishment and rapture. ‘Darling!’ she shrilled, hugging Nellie fervently. ‘How perfectly marvelous, and him so famous and an editor and all! Oh, darling! ...’ she collapsed into excited panting. It was evident that she considered Nellie tremendously clever to have acquired so singular and imposing a fiancé. Then suddenly dismay seized her — Winnie was subject to these spurts of emotion.

‘You'll forget all about me!’ she predicted woefully. - ‘You'll be so taken up with him that you won’t even think

~ of me!’

‘Why, Winnie!’ exclaimed Nellie with proper ‘sudaneiion: ‘You know, dearest, you know that I’ll never, never...’

Winnie hugged her impulsively. ‘Oh, I do, I do!’ she declared with feeling. Then she wept.

After that the days, the hours, the minutes all fled away swiftly. Even moments became of great value and importance. They were like bells, little silver bells, chiming time off into happy and precious fragments. There was so much to do that whenever Nellie stopped to think of it she was swallowed up in a sea of hopelessness. There was the trousseau first and above all. ‘It will never be ready,’ she decided with a bewildered little flutter of her white hands.

‘Well, why on earth should it be?’ asked Roger, who, apparently, couldn’t quite understand the vast importance of a trousseau.

But, ‘Of course it will,’ declared Winnie, who was seldom, if ever, daunted. She snd Nellie and Mrs. Cripp the dressmaker (expensive but obliging) sewed constantly and with a swiftness born of necessity. They would sit in the back room on the slippery horsehair sofa with organdy and taffeta and silk and mull billowing about them like sunset clouds. They would laugh and chat and plan with their mouths full of pins and their fingers flying...

‘And she gave them back to him — although I’m sure I don’t know why — and Mary thinks — dearest, the velvet sash, no, there, by the ribbon-box...’

‘Edgar feels it, I think, don’t you, dear? He’s so sensitive — Oh, my needle; under the leg, darling... no, the chair leg, not Mrs. Cripp’s...Oh, Mrs. Cripp! [I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean that, of course. There, thank you so much...’

Sometimes Aunt Harriet would assist them, but as she had a weakness for putting things on backwards or up-side-down and for mixing laces and buttons and dropping sugar crumbs in the mull puffs, as a rule she merely sat on the sidelines and encouraged them with forced optimism.

Fortunately the long, low cedar chest under the window in Nellie’s room had been something more than half full even before the garden party in early August. (‘Which just shows,’ remarked Winnie as she basted a hem, ‘that it does pay to be prepared — and now where’s the green silk thread, darling? ’)

By the twenty-first of the month they had, quite miraculously, finished up everything of vital importance. Besides the chest full of carefully folded garments, all lace-edged and scalloped and tucked and frilled, there was now hanging in the cool dimness of the deep closet a row of new frocks, very fresh and lovely. There was a rose-pink bengaline with the long, flowing draperies so fashionable at the moment; and a cashmere trimmed with marabout; and a blue porcelain wool (‘To match your eyes, darling,’ as Winnie observed) bordered with rows of mohair braid; and a fragile cream silk flounced with Valenciennes lace; and one of the latest frisé velvet mantles with chenille fringes and drops of jet; and lastly, set on the white hat-shelf with its paper-lace frill, a toque of green velvet with black quills and pompons. All very lovely, all very fresh in the cool dimness of the deep closet.

‘They’re just ravishing!’ declared Winnie, tired but triumphant, after they had sewn the last tiny glazed button on the bengaline.

Nellie stood by the window in the flare of afternoon sunshine, her blond hair tousled into fluffiness, her eyes a shining, tranquil blue. ‘I’m so happy,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Winnie, dear, I’m so happy.’

And Winnie hugged her excitedly and wept.

October the twenty-fourth was a day of serene gold with

Children of the Wind II an empty, cloudless sky. ‘Perfect weather,’ every one said. Aunt Harriet said it. Winnie said it. The guests all said it. After a while it became a veritable pzean: ‘Perfect weather!’

The wedding was held at a little church, ash-gray and laced about with ivy, not far from the Pettingil home.

Nellie had stood firm and fast for her church wedding. Roger wanted something unpretentious, without crowds, without the whirling fuss of a social affair.

‘Let’s just slip away quietly,’ he said. ‘Please, Nellie-girl. We don’t want people slobbering over us — one of these damned shows!’

Nellie’s fringed blue eyes filled with tears. ‘But I do,’ she faltered. ‘Roger, dear, I do... people and flowers and music, I want them!’

‘But why?’ asked Roger, almost sharply.

Nellie looked up at him, half-surprised, her lashes curling back damply over white lids. ‘It’s the way people always get married,’ she answered simply. She might have been reminding him that the moon rose with night, the snow came with winter.

Roger was silent a moment. And then, ‘Very well,’ he said shortly as if he were agreeing to play a game that he had long ago out-grown.

It was four o’clock and the little ash-gray church was dim and fragrant with white flowers. The mellow light of the closing afternoon slanted through the high arched windows at the side. It picked out the center aisle with pale gold — it made a long, slim path between the darkness of the pews.

As Nellie started out along the path she looked to the end for a moment, and smiled. Roger was up there, at the end... She walked slowly along the aisle, a little white figure, rather lovely, very serene, with pale sunlight drifting over the mist of tulle veil.

-Winnie, preceding with the other bridesmaids, was awed

~ and ecstatic and in an agony of fear lest she should do something horrible to spoil darling Nellie’s wedding. She was seized with the awful thought of stumbling suddenly and falling full length in the aisle, thus halting the entire beautiful procession and perhaps tripping up Mary, or even Nellie herself! What on earth should she do if it really happened? She would simply perish of mortification, what with the audience and Mr. Picklebaum and Roger an editor and all! She would perish — no doubt about that. Winnie stepped along cautiously, breathing-hard...

Nellie was smiling tranquilly, full of a great happiness, her blue eyes wide like twin flowers, and shining like dewed flowers at dawn. It seemed a very long way to the end of the sunny path; a lovely, fragrant way of white flowers. The music was swelling now; it throbbed above them, about them; there seemed almost too much aha for the little Gntieh to hold.

Outside, the street grew a little shadowy, grayness sifting through warm gold. The light from the high arched windows at the side was strained thinner and thinner through the sieve of approaching dusk. The polished pews — the white flowers, gleamed fainter...

And at the head of the little church Nellie Pettingil was promising to love, honor, and obey in a high, clear voice. She meant it; she meant it more than anything else in all the world. At that moment all life resolved itself into the one desire to love, honor, and obey Roger Blythe. Nothing else mattered, nothing else was.

(Some women in the dimness of the pews cried gently, unobtrusively, the dust of broken dreams lying in their eyes.)

But Roger, standing tall and motionless, seemed strangely detached from the fashionable, interested guests, the flowers, the music, all the careful little details. There was a look on his face half-scornful, half-tired. He might have been waiting for them to be through with an elaborate, slightly foolish game.

Chapter Two

I THE winter slipped away into spring with unbelievable swiftness. Just a brief space of snows and frosty skies, and then once more the damp pungency of brown earth and crushed, sodden leaves steaming a little in the first heat of the sun.

Nellie Blythe, looking out of the dining-room window while she brushed the crumbs off the table with a blue enamel scoop (Mary’s wedding present) into a white plate rimmed with roses (part of Aunt Harriet’s wedding present), would smile to herself, a serene smile born of nothing in particular. Just outside a clump of huddled lilac bushes were swelling into green; tiny heart-shaped leaves of the palest jade. And in a little while there would be flowers, whole masses of them— lavender and white, very sweet and lovely. It would be nice to have lilacs outside the window, surging up against the pane, nodding in between looped-back curtains....

She must change Roger’s chair around so that he would be able to see them. Roger loved lilacs.

Spring! — Spring! What a pretty word it was; like a song. Sometimes in the morning, when she was going about the house, mopping, tidying up, doing this and that, Nellie would hum it to herself, over and over. Spring — spring — time of daffodils — time of lilac. She hummed a lot in these early days of May. Little songs seemed to have been let loose in her; they bubbled up and spilled over into the quietness of the morning hours. They were vagrant and soft and purring; they came and went, and she scarcely knew it.

Nellie was happy, completely and finally happy; and also she was very busy. Happy and busy — but mostly happy.

Twice a week a nondescript, extraordinarily efficient individual known as ‘The Girl,’ came in and took full charge of the Blythe household. She seized upon it grimly, and beat and shook and pounded and scrubbed and banged the place until it shone with meek submission. She was a wistful and negative soul who seemed to find her one expression in crashing a house into order.

Nellie was always very polite and gracious to The Girl. As soon as she arrived, she would have an interview with her, talking very briskly and confidently, making slightly muddled plans for the day’s work, and issuing a score of vague and contradictory orders. The Girl listened passively and, upon being released, would proceed to do what she pleased in a manner congenial to her taste.

Nellie was dimly aware that the things which she said during the interview were of remarkably little importance. But of course one had to have interviews, if it were only to make the proper impression. One had to keep up appearances, as Aunt Harriet observed. It was natural.

At first, in those early weeks of November, keeping house had been a bewildering, almost alarming business. After Roger left in the morning, Nellie would stand in the middle of the white-and-buff kitchen, her arms hanging helplessly at her side. What did one do — and how did one do it? Dishes, beds, cleaning, marketing, meals — they all confronted her in a terrifying fashion: a tremendous field of tasks to be ploughed through somehow.

Aunt Harriet had come over frequently (and still did) to give her detailed and earnest advice. But Aunt Harriet’s advice was of the ornate, theoretical kind which she never practiced herself, but kept on hand for the benevolent purpose of impressing credulous souls in need of counsel. Nellie listened politely, and nodded and agreed and tried very hard afterwards to remember what it had all been about.

gts: =

Children of the Wind ‘e

’ Winnie, however, by sheer force of perseverance, had made herself invaluable. She ransacked every book and magazine and pamphlet she could lay her hands on in search of recipes and general household hints. In time she accumulated a vast mass of information, all of which was dutifully brought to Nellie in the manner of an energetic terrier laying bones at his master’s feet.

She acquired the habit of bursting into the house, breathless and jubilant, at all hours of the day and evening. ‘Darling,’ she would announce, plopping herself into a chair and beginning to rock back and forth with business-like animation, ‘if you’ll scatter damp tea-leaves over the rugs before sweeping, you won’t have any dust — just imagine! And always boil a sprig of mint with new peas, it makes them twice as tasty. And here’s another way to fix shrimps; I cut it out of a magazine in the library, but I don’t suppose they'll mind. A-la-something-or-other. It’s French, I guess. And Mamma sent this — it’s for pickles, sweet ones like we had the other night. And, dearest, I almost forgot it! I was just going down the front steps when Mamma opened the door. “Winnie,” she called, ‘‘you’ve forgotten this!”” And, sure enough, I had. It was lying on the table in the hall, and she wouldn’t even have noticed it, only...’

Winnie would rock and chat and give forth reams of recipes and hints that she had obtained by foul means or fair. Nellie couldn’t remember very much of it; but occasionally she caught firmly onto a slip of advice. Like the tea-leaves! Nellie always scattered tea-leaves before sweeping!

But by spring Winnie’s violent enthusiasm had dwindled considerably, and on a certain day she was seized with a sudden and erratic dislike for cookery books and articles on ‘How to Remove Rust Stains’ and ‘How to Keep Onions from Smelling’ and to ‘Make Jellies Jell’ and ‘Avoid Lumps in Sauces.’ Somehow, the whole subject became most distasteful, like flowers that have festered. And, besides, there was something much more thrilling on hand now; something beside which the smell of onions assumed the meanest of proportions.

Winnie began to hunt for patterns — long, tucked gowns with the tiniest sleeves, and bonnets, very frilly and fragile...

And by spring Nellie’s first panic had given place to a calm conviction that, taking all things into consideration, she was really a very good manager. Not excellent, like Mrs. Landor, perhaps. But good, even very good. She would ‘serve mediocre meals with a complacent dignity, and mop and dust and shop with the air of one who knows she is making a commendable job of it.

Roger, standing tall and careless in the kitchen doorway, while she spattered eggs about in an earnest attempt to make an omelet, would look amused. Somehow Roger found so many things at which to look amused. ...

By July Nellie and Winnie were deep in another orgy of sewing. They usually sat in the garden by the lilac bushes, their laps filled with the finest of muslin and laces. They made a great many things.

‘Too many, I’m afraid, dear,’ Nellie observed.

‘Oh, well,’ remarked Winnie pleasantly, ‘they probably won't be wasted. And, besides’ — with a delicate lowering of voice — ‘er — twins, you know, darling!’

Nellie looked startled. She had never thought of twins.

‘Even — even triplets,’ continued Winnie, who was rather fascinated by the idea. ‘And — what-d’you-call them, quad-something ... four, you know.’ |

Nellie looked acutely distressed. ‘Dearest —’ she quavered.

Winnie’s bright air of expectancy was swallowed up in remorse. ‘Oh, darling, I’m so sorry; I’m most awfully sorry, really and truly Iam.’ She blundered about with regret for some moments, and then settled down to admiration. ‘You're just wonderful, Nellie. I never saw any one so calm and brave. I don’t see how you do it, really IT don’t!’ She repeated this frequently in a aN aN tone of astonishment and benevolence.

Sometimes, when their sewing ardor palled, Winnie would read out of what she always called her ‘favorite magazine.’ ‘Now, dearest, just lean back and rest and I'll read a little out of my favorite magazine.’ It was a very up-to-date periodical. It had articles on ‘The Attitude of Women toward Dumb Animals,’ and ‘Women and Watches,’ and ‘Women and Sport,’ and (of course) the perennial ‘New Woman.’ It ran a variety of serials, all practically endless, which Winnie followed with intense interest. (Illustrated too; Winnie didn’t care for stories that weren’t illustrated.) Also it had an Etiquette Department (very ably conducted) wherein one might learn if it was proper to throw back one’s veil in church on a hot day, or if it was permissible to run after a friend in the street, or if a young lady and a young gentleman (not engaged, but with encouraging prospects) might walk together — alone — after dark.