“Never,” I answered.

“She’s coming, and I do believe she has got more of this ruffling.  I see it floating down her skirt,” Nell fairly groaned.

Nell ought to like to sew.  She isn’t emancipated enough to hate a needle as I do.  But the leaven is working and she’s rising slowly.  It might be well for some man to work the dough down a little before she runs over the pan.  That’s a primitively feminine wish and not at all in accordance with my own advanced ideas.

I was becoming slightly snarled with my thread, and I was glad when Sallie and her sweetness seated itself in the best rocker in the softest breeze, which Nell had vacated for her.

“Children are the greatest happiness in life and also the greatest responsibility, girls,” she said, in her lovely rich voice that always melts me to a solution of sympathy whenever she uses it pensively on me.  “Of course, I should be desolate without mine, but what could I do with them, if I didn’t have all of you dear people to help me with them?”

Her wistful dependence had charm.

I looked at the twin with the yellow fuzz on the top of its head that has hall-marked it as the Kitten in my mind, seated on Sallie’s lap with her head on Sallie’s shoulder looking like a baby bud folded against the full rose, and I couldn’t help laughing.  Kit had been undressed three times after her bath this morning while Cousin Martha, Cousin Jasmine and Mrs. Hargrove argued with each other whether she should or shouldn’t have a scrap of flannel put on over her fat little stomach.  Henrietta finally decided the matter by being impudent and sensible to them all about the temperature.

“Don’t you all ’spose God made the sun some to heat up Kit’s stomach?” she demanded scornfully, as she grabbed the little roly-poly bone of contention and marched off with her to finish dressing her on the front porch in the direct rays of her instituted heater.

The household at large at Widegables can never agree on the clothing of the twins and Henrietta often has to finish their toilets thus, by force.  Aunt Dilsie being reduced by her phthisic to a position that is almost entirely ornamental, Henrietta’s strength of character is the only thing that has made the existence of the twins bearable to themselves or other people.

As I have said before, I do wish that some day in the future you will come under the direct rays of Henrietta’s influence, Jane, dear!

“Yes, Sallie, I should call them a responsibility,” I answered her with a laugh, as I reached up my arms for the Kitten.  Then, as the little yellow head snuggled in the hollow that was instituted in the beginning between a woman’s breast and arm for the purpose of just such nestlings, I whispered as I laid my lips against her little ear, “and a happiness, too, darling.”

And as Sallie rocked and recuperated her breath Nell eyed the ruffle apprehensively.