Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1917-09-18

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, We're
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, to 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 a 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 a 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
and frightened them half to death. So
that, without discrimination, they
howled and brought Miss French fly
ing to the rescue.
Rose didn't make a tragedy of it;
managed a 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 funnfly 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, fif
teen feet high or so, snatch her like
that?
She was rather apologize 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 battle 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 half-orange
at ten o'clock in the morning, the
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 a nurse as
Gus tenseness over her new job very
quickly. Within a week she had
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-
a-half-old babies, she should find her
self Strengthening UP and saying:
what next?" and realizing that, so
far as this job was concerned, there
was no "next." The supreme merit
of her care from now on would be-
barring emergencies-the placid con-
tinuation of that routine. There were
no heroics about motherhood-save in
emergency, once more.
1t was a fine relation. 1t was, per-
haps, the very finest in the world.
But as a job, it wasn't so satisfactory.
Four-ffths of it, anyway, could be
done with better results, for the chill
dren, by a placid, unimaginative, toll
erably stupid person who had no
stronger feeling for them than the
mild, temporary affection they could
excite in anyone not a monster. And
the c.her fifth of it wasn't a Job at
all.
On the whole, then, leaving their
miraculous hours out of the account,
their honeymoon, considered as an at
tempt to revisit Already, to seize a
golden day which looked neither to-
ward the future, complete in itself,
perfect-was a failure.
1t was not until, pretty ruefully,
they acknowledged this, tore up their
artificial resolution not to look at the
future, and deliberately set themselves
to the contemplation of a life that
would have to take into account CON-
pick and battling considerations, that
their honeymoon became a success.
1t was well along in their month that
this happened.
Rose had spent maddening sort of
day, day that had been all edges,
trying not to let herself feel hurt over
fantastic secondary meanings which it
was possible to attach to some of the
things Rodney had said. trying to be
cheerful and sensible, and to ignore
the patent fact that his cheerfulness
was as forced and unnatural a thing
as hers. The children-as a rule the
L. l. -