Tilly’s head went upward and backward with a little dilatation of the nostrils.  “Now, mother,” said she in a voice of determined gentleness, “just listen to me.  Would I ask you to do anything that wouldn’t be for your happiness?  I have found a real pretty house up on Fifteenth Street; and we’ll keep house together, just as cosey; and have a woman come to wash and iron and scrub, so it won’t be a bit hard; and be right on the street-cars; and you won’t have to drudge helping Mrs. Carleton extra times with her restaurant.”

“But, Tilly,” eagerly interrupted Mrs. Louder, “you know I dearly love to cook, and she pays me.  I couldn’t feel right to take any of the pension money, or the little property your father left me, away from the house expenses; but what I earn myself, it is such a comfort to give away out of that.”

Tilly ran over and kissed the agitated face.  “You dear, generous mother!” cried she, “I’ll give you all the money you want to spend or give.  I got another rise in my salary of five a month.  Don’t you worry.”

“You ain’t thinking of doing anything right away, Tilly?”

“Don’t you think it’s best done and over with, after we’ve decided, mother?  You have worked so hard all your life I want to give you some ease and peace now.”

“But, Tilly, I love to work; I wouldn’t be happy to do nothing, and I’d get so fleshy!”

Tilly only laughed.  She did not crave the show of authority.  Let her but have her own way, she would never flaunt her victories.  She was imperious, but she was not arrogant.  For months she had been pondering how to give her mother an easier life; and she set the table for supper, in a filial glow of satisfaction, never dreaming that her mother, in the kitchen, was keeping her head turned from the stove lest she should cry into the fried ham and stewed potatoes.  But, at a sudden thought, Jane Louder laid her big spoon down to wipe her eyes.

“Here you are, Jane Louder”—­thus she addressed herself—­“mourning and grieving to leave your friends and be laid aside for a useless old woman, and jist be taken care of, and you clean forgetting the chance the Lord gives you to help more’n you ever helped in your life!  For shame!”

A smile of exaltation, of lofty resolution, erased the worry lines on her face.  “Why, it might be to save twenty lives,” said she; but in the very speaking of the words a sharp pain wrenched her heart again, and she caught up the baby from the floor, where he sat in a wall of chairs, and sobbed over him:  “Oh, how can I go away when I got to go for good so soon?  I want every minnit!”

She never thought of disputing Tilly’s wishes.  “It’s only fair,” said Jane.  “She’s lived here all these years to please me, and now I ought to be willing to go to please her.”

Neither did she for a moment hope to change Tilly’s determination.  “She was the settest baby ever was,” thought poor Jane, tossing on her pillow, in the night watches, “and it’s grown with every inch of her!”