who always knew what everybody wanted, to think of it, and Edward must be a good boy and not cut himself. His mother's facing about in the matter of the knife and allowing—him to keep it was the real wonder.
Then Alice Ruggles—"that agnostic's child"—put her pert face and voice into evidence and caused everybody to laugh by saying: "Say, Edward, what are you going to do with the ten?"
He did not know. He would have liked to put it in his pocket, but he handed it over instead to his Dear Mother for safe keeping.
Ruth had never been a child's child, and she had not grown up to be a child's woman. But on the present occasion, in spite of her "poor back," she laid herself out for the entertainment and amusement of Edward and his small guests.
In spite of her wasp waist and her fashionable bustle, she was a lovely creature to the eye, and seeing her among the children, gracious and full of fun, young Armitage's mind swam, and he: thought of her as his wife, and of the children as their children. These thoughts made him very happy.
And when, the party not quite over, she suddenly confessed to him, her face adorably composed and courageous, that she had reached the end of her tether, that her "wretched back" was
