“Dad worshipped mother,” submitted the boy, hesitatingly.

“Yes, of course!  But he was working day and night, and they were poor, and then she was ill.  I don’t think she managed very well.  Those frightful, sloppy servants we used to have, and smoky fires, and sticky summer dinners—­and three bad little kids crying and leaving screen doors open, and spilling the syrup!  I remember her at the stove, flushed and hot.  You think I don’t, but I do!”

“Yes, I do, too,” he assented uncomfortably, frowningly.

“And do you remember the Easter eggs, Ted?”

Theodore nodded, wincing.

“She forgot to buy them, you know, and then walked two miles in the hot spring weather, just to surprise and please us!”

“And then the eggs smashed, didn’t they?”

“On the way home, yes.  And we cried with fury, little beasts that we were!” said Rosemary, as if unable to stop the sad little train of memories.  “I can remember that awful Belle that we had, making her drink some port.  I wouldn’t kiss her.  And she said that she would see if she couldn’t get me another egg the next day.  And then Dad came in, and scolded us all so, and carried her upstairs!”

She suddenly burst out crying, and clung to her brother.  And he let her cry for a while, patting her shoulder and talking to her until control and even cheerfulness came back, and she could be trusted to go upstairs and bathe her eyes for lunch.

When the lunch bell rang, Rosemary went downstairs, to find her stepmother at the wide hall doorway with a yellow telegram in her hand.

“News from Bess,” said Mrs. Bancroft, quickly.  “Good news, thank God!  George wires that she and the little son are doing well.  The baby came at eleven this morning.  Dad’s just come in, and he’s telephoning that you and I will come over right after lunch.  Think of it!  Think of it!”

“Bess!” said Rosemary, unsteadily.  She read the telegram, and clung a little limply to the firm hand that held it.  “Bess’s baby!” she said dazedly.

“Bess’s darling baby—­think of holding it, Aunt Rose!”

Rosemary’s sober eyes flashed joyously.

“Oh, I am—­so I am!  An aunt!  Doesn’t it seem queer?”

“It seems very queer to me,” said Mrs. Bancroft, as they sat down on a wide window-seat to revel in the news, “for I went to see your mother, on just such a morning, when Bess herself was just a day old—­it seems only a year ago!  Bless us, how old we get!  Your mother was younger than I, you know, and I remember that she seemed to me mighty young to have a baby!  And now here’s her baby’s baby!  Your mother was like an exquisite child, Rosey-posy, showing off little Bess.  They lived in a little playhouse of a cottage, with blue curtains, and blue china, and a snubnosed little maid in blue!  I passed it on my way to school,—­I had been teaching for seven years or so, then,—­and your mother would call out from the garden and make