“Yes, nine it is, ma’am.  God save us.  Teddy will be fourteen on St. Patrick’s Day, and all the rest are younger.”

“It is a great responsibility to be a mother, and yet how few there be that think of it,” added Mrs. Francis, dreamily.

“Thrue for ye ma’am,” Mrs. Watson broke in.  “There’s my own man, John Watson.  That man knows no more of what it manes than you do yerself that hasn’t one at all at all, the Lord be praised; and him the father of nine.”

“I have just been reading a great book by Dr. Ernestus Parker, on ‘Motherhood.’  It would be a great benefit to both you and your husband.”

“Och, ma’am,” Mrs. Watson broke in, hastily, “John is no hand for books and has always had his suspicions o’ them since his own mother’s great-uncle William Mulcahey got himself transported durin’ life or good behaviour for havin’ one found on him no bigger’n an almanac, at the time of the riots in Ireland.  No, ma’am, John wouldn’t rade it at all at all, and he don’t know one letther from another, what’s more.”

“Then if you would read it and explain it to him, it would be so helpful to you both, and so inspiring.  It deals so ably with the problems of child-training.  You must be puzzled many times in the training of so many little minds, and Dr. Parker really does throw wonderful light on all the problems that confront mothers.  And I am sure the mother of nine must have a great many perplexities.”

Yes, Mrs. Watson had a great many perplexities—­how to make trousers for four boys out of the one old pair the minister’s wife had given her; how to make the memory of the rice-pudding they had on Sunday last all the week; how to work all day and sew at night, and still be brave and patient; how to make little Danny and Bugsey forget they were cold and hungry.  Yes, Mrs. Watson had her problems; but they were not the kind that Dr. Ernestus Parker had dealt with in his book on “Motherhood.”

“But I must not keep you, Mrs. Watson,” Mrs. Francis said, as she remembered the washing.  “When you go downstairs will you kindly bring me up a small red notebook that you will find on the desk in the library?”

“Yes ma’am,” said Mrs. Watson, and went heavily down the stairs.  She found the book and brought it up.

While she was making the second laborious journey down the softly padded stairs, Mrs. Francis was making an entry in the little red book.

   Dec. 7, 1903.  Talked with one woman to-day re Beauty
   of Motherhood.  Recommended Dr. Parker’s book.  Believe
   good done.

Then she closed the book with a satisfied feeling.  She was going to have a very full report for her department at the next Annual Convention of the Society for Propagation of Lofty Ideals.