“It’s Mis’ Robinson’s; it’s dead.  Hadn’t I better get her something to take?  I’ve got some currant wine.  Maybe a little of that would do her good.”

“No, thank you; I don’t care for any,” Lois interposed quickly.

“Hadn’t you better have a little?  You look real pale.”

“No, thank you.”

“Now you needn’t mind takin’ it, Lois, if you do belong to any temperance society.  It wouldn’t go to the head of a baby kitten.”

“I’m just as much obliged, but I don’t care for any,” said Lois.

Mrs. Maxwell turned over a page of the album.  “That’s Mis’ Robinson’s sister.  She’s dead too.  She married a man over at Milton, an’ didn’t live a year,” she said ostentatiously.  “Hadn’t I better get her a little?” she whispered.

“Mebbe it would do her good, if you’ve got it to spare,” Mrs. Field whispered back.

“Here’s the minister’s little boy that died,” said Mrs. Maxwell.  “He wasn’t sick but a day.  He ate milk an’ cherries.  I wonder where Flora is?  She didn’t have a thing to do but comb her hair and change her dress.  I guess I’ll go call her.”

Mrs. Maxwell’s face was frowning with innocent purpose, but there was a sly note in her voice.  She hurried out of the room and they heard her call, “Flora!  Flora!” in the entry.  Then they heard her footsteps on the cellar stairs.

Lois turned to her mother.  “Mother,” said she, “I can’t stand it—­I can’t stand it anyway in the world.”

Her mother turned over another page of the photograph album.  She looked at a faded picture of a middle-aged woman, whose severe and melancholy face seemed to have betrayed all the sadness and toil of her whole life to the camera.  She noted deliberately the old-fashioned sweep of the skirt quite across the little card, and the obsolete sleeves, then she spoke as if she were talking to the picture:  “I’m a-followin’ out my own law an’ my own right,” said she.  “I ain’t ashamed of it.  If you want to be you can.”

“It’s awful.  Oh, mother, don’t!”

“A good many things are awful,” said her mother.  “Injustice is awful; if you want to set yourself up against your mother, you can.  I’ve laid out this road that’s just an’ right, an’ I’m goin’ on it; you can do jest as you’re a-mind to.  If you want to tell her when she comes back, you can.  I ain’t ashamed of it, for I know I’m doin’ what is just an’ right.”

Mrs. Field noted how the photographed woman’s dress was trimmed with fringe, after the fashion of one she had worn twenty years ago.

Lois looked across the room at her mother’s pale, stern face bending over the album.  The garlands on Mrs. Maxwell’s parlor carpet might have been the flora of a whole age, she and her mother seemed so far apart, with that recession of soul which can cover more than earthly spaces.  To the young girl with her scared, indignant eyes the older woman seemed actually living and breathing under new conditions in some strange element.