The Clio messenger., 1917-09-14

been captured at any smaller price.
But life, of course, cannot be made
up of hours like that. No sane per-
son can even want to live In a per-
petual ecstasy. What makes noun
tain peak Is the fal away into the
surrounding valleys.
In their valleys Of commonplace,
everyday existence-and these oc-
Cured even in their first days together
they were stiff, shy. self-conscious
with each other. And their attempt to
! ignore this fact only made the self
consciousness the worse. 1t troubled
and bewildered both of them.
The arrival of the twins, in the con-
vov Of a badly fiustered-and, to tell
truth, somewhat scandalized-
MISS French, simplified the situation
somewhat-by complicating it! They
absolutely enforced routine. And
| they gave Rose and Rodney so many
occupations that the contemplation of
their complicated states of mind was
much abridged.
But even her babies brought Rose a
disappointment along with them. From
the time of the receipt of Miss
French's telegram, telling them what
train she and the twins would take.
Rose had been telling Off the hours
in mounting excitement. The two ut
| terly adorable little creatures, as the
pictures of them in Rodney's pocket
book showed them to be, who were
miraculously, incredibly hers, were
coming to bring motherhood to her
She didn't go to Boston with Rod
ney to meet them; stayed behind
in the cottage. ostensibly to see to it.
up to the very last minute. that the
fires were right (June had come in
cold and rainy and. in general, to be
ready, on the moment. 70 produce any
thing that their rather unforeseeable
needs might call for. Her real rea-
son was shrinking from having her
first meeting with them in the confu-
sion Of arrival on station platform.
under the eyes Of the world. Rodney
understood this well enough, and, ar
irving at the cottage, he clambered
out Of the wagon with them and car
ried them both straight in to Rose,
leaving the nurse and the bewildering
paraphernalia of travel for second
trip.
Rose, in the passionate surge of
gratified desire that came with the
sight of them, caught them from him,
crushed them up against her breast
| FRI a. hnI 70
that, without dissimulation, they
howled and brought Miss French fly
ing to the rescue.
Rose didn't make tragedy Of 1t ;
managed smile at herself, though she
suspected she'd cry when she got the
chance, and subjected her ideas to an
instantaneous revision. They were
persons, those two funnily indignant
little mites, with their own ideas, their
own preferences, and the perfectly ade-
quate conviction of being entitled to
them. How would she herself have
liked 1t, to have a total stranger, If
teen feet high or so, snatch her like
that?
She was rather apologetic all day,
and got her reward, especially from
the boy, who was an adventurous and
rather truculent baby, much, she fan
cied. as his father must once have
been, and who took to her more quick
ly than the girl did. Indeed, the Sec
ond Rodney fell in love with her al
most as promptly as his father had
done before him. But little Portia
wasn't very far behind. Two days suf-
feed for the conquest Of the pair of
them.
The really disquieting discovery
awaited the time when tHe wire edge
Of novelty about this adventure in
motherhood had worn off; when she
could bathe them, dress them, feed
them their very strictly regimented
meals, without being spurred to the
highest pitch OF alertness by the fear
of making mistake-forgetting some
thing like the juice of a half-orange
at ten o'clock in the morning, tbA
omission of which might have-who
knew what disastrous consequences
That attitude can't last any woman
long, and Rose, with her wonderfully
clever hands, her wits trained not to
be told the same thing twice, her
pride keeping In sharp focus the de-
termination that Rodney should see
that she could be as good nurse as
Miss French-Rose wore off that nerv-
Gus tenseness over her new job very
quickly. Within q week she had q
routine established that was noiseless
-frictionless.
But, do you remember how aghast
she was over the forty weeks John
Galbraith had talked about as the
probable run of '"The Girl Upstairs :"
her CONSERVATION over the idea of just
going on doing the same thing over
and over again, "around and around,
like horse at the end Of a pole?"
Well, it was with something the
same feeling of CONSERVATION that,
having thrown herself heart and soul
into the task of planning and setting
in motion a routine for two year-and-
i lT -. Il