and comparing, trying small experiments.  Often sharply she would draw in her horns.  She had struck something “common!” And she knew all this was nothing compared to the puzzles that lay ahead.  For from her friend, Madge Deering, whose girls were well along in their ’teens, she heard of deeper problems.  The girls were so inquisitive.  Dauntlessly Madge was facing each month the most disturbing questions.  Thank Heaven, Edith had only one daughter.  Sons were not quite so baffling.

So she had groped her way along.

When her father and Deborah arrived, placidly she asked them what they had been doing.  And when she heard that they had been at a concert on the Sabbath, though this was far from old-fashioned and something she would not have done herself, it did not bother her half so much as the fact that Hannah, the Irish nurse, had slapped little Tad that afternoon.  She had never known Hannah to do it before.  Could it be that the girl was tired or sick?  Perhaps she needed a few days off.  “I must have a talk with her,” Edith thought, “as soon as father and Deborah go.”

Roger always liked to come here.  Say what you would about Edith’s habit of keeping too closely to her home, the children to whom she had devoted herself were a fine, clean, happy lot.  Here were new lives in his family, glorious fresh beginnings.  He sat on the floor with her three boys, watching the patient efforts of George to harness his perturbed white rat to Tad’s small fire engine.  George was a lank sprawling lad of fourteen, all legs and arms and elbows, with rumpled hair and freckled face, a quick bright smile and nice brown eyes—­frank, simple, understandable eyes.  All but one of Edith’s children were boys, and boys were a blessed relief to a man who had three grown-up daughters.

And while Roger watched them, with a gentle glow of anticipation he waited for what should follow, when as had been already arranged Deborah should break to her sister the news of Laura’s engagement.  And he was not disappointed.  The change in Edith was something tremendous.  Until now so quietly self-absorbed, at the news that Laura was to be married instantly she was all alert.  Sitting there in the midst of her children and facing a time of agony only a few weeks ahead which would add one more to her family, Edith’s pretty florid face grew flushed and radiant as she exclaimed,

“What a perfectly wonderful thing for Laura!  Now if only she can have a child!”

Her questions followed thick and fast, and with them her thoughts of what should be done.  Bruce must look up this suitor at once.  Bruce demurred stoutly but without avail.  She eagerly questioned her sister as to Laura’s plans for the wedding, but plainly she considered that Deborah was no woman to give her the full information she wanted.  She must see Laura herself at once.  For though she had thoroughly disapproved of the gay helter-skelter existence of her youngest sister, still Laura was now to be married, and this made all the difference.