Mother | Page 4

tales and treasures of eventful days, Knowing no deed too humble for
your praise, Nor any gift too trivial to please, So still we bring, with
older smiles and tears, What gifts we may, to claim the old, dear right;
Your faith, beyond the silence and the night, Your love still close and
watching through the years.
MOTHER
CHAPTER I
"Well, we couldn't have much worse weather than this for the last week
of school, could we?" Margaret Paget said in discouragement. She
stood at one of the school windows, her hands thrust deep in her coat
pockets for warmth, her eyes following the whirling course of the storm
that howled outside. The day had commenced with snow, but now, at
twelve o'clock, the rain was falling in sheets, and the barren
schoolhouse yard, and the play-shed roof, ran muddy streams of water.
Margaret had taught in this schoolroom for nearly four years now, ever
since her seventeenth birthday, and she knew every feature of the big
bare room by heart, and every detail of the length of village street that

the high, uncurtained windows commanded. She had stood at this
window in all weathers: when locust and lilac made even ugly little
Weston enchanting, and all the windows were open to floods of sweet
spring air; when tie dry heat of autumn burned over the world; when
the common little houses and barns, and the bare trees, lay dazzling and
transfigured under the first snowfall, and the wood crackled in the
schoolroom stove; and when, as to-day, midwinter rains swept drearily
past the windows, and the children must have the lights lighted for their
writing lesson. She was tired of it all, with an utter and hopeless
weariness. Tired of the bells, and the whispering, and the shuffling feet,
of the books that smelled of pencil-dust and ink and little dusty fingers;
tired of the blackboards, cleaned in great irregular scallops by small
and zealous arms; of the clear-ticking big clock; of little girls who
sulked, and little girls who cried after hours in the hall because they had
lost their lunch baskets or their overshoes, and little girls who had colds
in their heads, and no handkerchiefs. Looking out into the gray day and
the rain, Margaret said to herself that she was sick of it all!
There were no little girls in the schoolroom now. They were for the
most part downstairs in the big playroom, discussing cold lunches, and
planning, presumably, the joys of the closely approaching holidays.
One or two windows had been partially opened to air the room in their
absence, and Margaret's only companion was another teacher, Emily
Porter, a cheerful little widow, whose plain rosy face was in marked
contrast to the younger woman's unusual beauty.
Mrs. Porter loved Margaret and admired her very much, but she herself
loved teaching. She had had a hard fight to secure this position a few
years ago; it meant comfort to her and her children, and it still seemed
to her a miracle of God's working, after her years of struggle and worry.
She could not understand why Margaret wanted anything better; what
better thing indeed could life hold! Sometimes, looking admiringly at
her associate's crown of tawny braids, at the dark eyes and the exquisite
lines of mouth and forehead, Mrs. Porter would find herself
sympathetic with the girl's vague discontent and longings, to the extent
of wishing that some larger social circle than that of Weston might
have a chance to appreciate Margaret Paget's beauty, that "some of

those painters who go crazy over girls not half as pretty" might see her.
But after all, sensible little Mrs. Porter would say to herself, Weston
was a "nice" town, only four hours from New York, absolutely
up-to-date; and Weston's best people were all "nice," and the Paget
girls were very popular, and "went everywhere," --young people were
just discontented and exacting, that was all!
She came to Margaret's side now, buttoned snugly into her own storm
coat, and they looked out at the rain together. Nothing alive was in
sight. The bare trees tossed in the wind, and a garden gate halfway
down the row of little shabby cottages banged and banged.
"Shame--this is the worst yet!" Mrs. Porter said. "You aren't going
home to lunch in all this, Margaret?"
"Oh, I don't know," Margaret said despondently. "I'm so dead that I'd
make a cup of tea here if I didn't think Mother would worry and send
Julie over with lunch."
"I brought some bread and butter--but not much. I hoped it would hold
up. I hate to leave Tom and Sister alone all day," Mrs. Porter said
dubiously. "There's tea and some of those bouillon cubes and some
crackers left. But you're so tired, I