Sam Brewster rumpled his hair with a smothered yawn. "Marian is certainly a strenuous lady," he murmured. "But let me advise you, Betty, not to discuss family discipline with her, if you wish to preserve peaceful relations between the families. The illegitimate use of the Stanford butter-paddle is nothing to us, you know.--Er--you were telling me about the letter you had from the fair Evelyn," he went on pacifically, "and did my ears deceive me? or did you intimate that our dear friend Miss Tripp was coming to spend the day with us soon?"
"To spend the day!" echoed Elizabeth. "She's coming to stay two weeks. I had to ask her, Sam," she added, quickly forestalling his dismayed protest; "she is obliged to be in town interviewing lawyers and people, and I did want to do something to help her. Sam, she thinks she may be obliged to teach, or do something; but she isn't up on anything, and I don't believe she could possibly get any sort of a position."
"Betty, you're a good little woman," he said, beaming humorously upon her; "and I never felt more convinced of the fact than I do this minute. I'm game, though; I'll do everything I can to help in my small, weak way."
Elizabeth gazed at her husband with wide, meditative eyes. "I do wish," she said devoutly, "that Evelyn could meet some nice, suitable man. She's really very attractive--you know she is, Sam--and it would solve all her problems so beautifully."
"How would Hickey do?" he inquired lazily. "George is forty, if not fat and fair; and he's a thoroughly good fellow."
Elizabeth Brewster had been awake in the night, as was her custom, making her noiseless rounds of the children's beds by the dim light of a candle. A cold wind had sprung up, with driving snow and sleet, and she feared its incursion into her nursery. Daylight found her in the kitchen superintending the slow movements of Celia, who upset the coffee-pot, dropped a soft-boiled egg on the hearth and stumbled over her untied shoe-strings in her untutored efforts to assist.
Close upon the hurried departure of her husband to his office in a distant part of the city, came the sound of small feet and voices from above. With Sam's kiss still warm on her lips she ran lightly upstairs. Carroll, partly dressed, stood before the mirror brushing his hair, in funny imitation of his father's careful manner of accomplishing that necessary process; while Doris scampered wildly about in her night-gown, her small bare feet pink with cold.