Mother | Page 7

her own personal ambitions, if she had any, were quite lost
sight of, and the actual outlines of her character were forgotten by
every one, herself included. If her busy day marched successfully to
nightfall; if darkness found her husband reading in his big chair, the
younger children sprawled safe and asleep in the shabby nursery, the
older ones contented with books or games, the clothes sprinkled, the
bread set, the kitchen dark and clean; Mrs. Paget asked no more of life.
She would sit, her overflowing work-basket beside her, looking from
one absorbed face to another, thinking perhaps of Julie's new school
dress, of Ted's impending siege with the dentist, or of the old bureau up
attic that might be mended for Bruce's room. "Thank God we have all
warm beds," she would say, when they all went upstairs, yawning and
chilly.
She had married, at twenty, the man she loved, and had found him
better than her dreams in many ways, and perhaps disappointing in
some few others, but "the best man in the world" for all that. That for
more than twenty years he had been satisfied to stand for nine hours
daily behind one dingy desk, and to carry home to her his unopened
salary envelope twice a month, she found only admirable. Daddy was
"steady," he was "so gentle with the children," he was "the easiest man
in the world to cook for." "Bless his heart, no woman ever had less to

worry over in her husband!" she would say, looking from her kitchen
window to the garden where he trained the pea-vines, with the
children's yellow heads bobbing about him. She never analyzed his
character, much less criticised him. Good and bad, he was taken for
granted; she was much more lenient to him than to any of the children.
She welcomed the fast-coming babies as gifts from God, marvelled
over their tiny perfectness, dreamed over the soft relaxed little forms
with a heart almost too full for prayer. She was, in a word,
old-fashioned, hopelessly out of the modern current of thoughts and
events. She secretly regarded her children as marvellous, even while
she laughed down their youthful conceit and punished their
naughtiness.
Thinking a little of all these things, as a girl with her own wifehood and
motherhood all before her does think, Margaret went back to her hot
luncheon. One o'clock found her at her desk, refreshed in spirit by her
little outburst, and much fortified in body. The room was well aired,
and a reinforced fire roared in the little stove. One of the children had
brought her a spray of pine, and the spicy fragrance of it reminded her
that Christmas and the Christmas vacation were near; her mind was
pleasantly busy with anticipation of the play that the Pagets always
wrote and performed some time during the holidays, and with the New
Year's costume dance at the Hall, and a dozen lesser festivities.
Suddenly, in the midst of a droning spelling lesson, there was a jarring
interruption. From the world outside came a child's shrill screaming,
which was instantly drowned in a chorus of frightened voices, and in
the schoolroom below her own Margaret heard a thundering rush of
feet, and answering screams. With a suffocating terror at her heart she
ran to the window, followed by every child in the room.
The rain had stopped now, and the sky showed a pale, cold, yellow
light low in the west. At the schoolhouse gate an immense limousine
car had come to a stop. The driver, his face alone visible between a
great leather coat and visored leather cap, was talking unheard above
the din. A tall woman, completely enveloped in sealskins, had
evidently jumped from the limousine, and now held in her arms what

made Margaret's heart turn sick and cold, the limp figure of a small
girl.
About these central figures there surged the terrified crying small
children of the just-dismissed primer class, and in the half moment that
Margaret watched, Mrs. Porter, white and shaking, and another teacher,
Ethel Elliot, an always excitable girl, who was now sobbing and
chattering hysterically, ran out from the school, each followed by her
own class of crowding and excited boys and girls.
With one horrified exclamation, Margaret ran downstairs, and out to
the gate. Mrs. Porter caught at her arm as she passed her in the path.
"Oh, my God, Margaret! It's poor little Dorothy Scott!" she said.
"They've killed her. The car went completely over her!"
"Oh, Margaret, don't go near, oh, how can you!" screamed Miss Elliot.
"Oh, and she's all they have! Who'll tell her mother!"
With astonishing ease, for the children gladly recognized authority,
Margaret pushed through the group to the motor-car.
"Stop screaming--stop that shouting at