Junior was right. Mother's getting older. Why, she never forgot before. Poor mother! How badly she'll feel when she does recollect!"
Two weeks later it was Junior's birthday that Mrs. Harvey "forgot."
To Sally, his wife, Junior asked at dinner. "Nothing come over from the house yet?" (the Harvey children all referred to their old home as "the house"), and later, "No word at all from mother to-day?" and at ten P. M. anxiously, "Do you suppose mother's sick?"
But she wasn't, just a little tired, after getting Elsie off to New York, she explained over the telephone,—So it was! His forty-fifth birthday! Well—well! she hoped it was a happy one—and there! she hadn't made him a cake, had she? Had he missed it very much?
"Not a bit—not a bit, mother, Glad enough you didn't bother!" he assured her emphatically. But to Sally he remarked gravely, "Mother's really getting older, Sally, I'm afraid."
In September it was Mary and Phil's wedding anniversary day that mother failed to observe by a little dinner at the house. In October it was the grandchildren's Hallowe'en party that she explained she was a little too tired after the church supper to arrange.
On Thanksgiving, for the first time since any
