"I thought I'd slip over after supper and ask her," Mis' Winslow said; "maybe I'd best go now--and come back and tell you what she says." Mis' Winslow found Mary Chavah sitting by her pattern bookcase, cutting out a pattern. Mary's face was flushed and her eyes were bright, and she went on with her pattern, thrilled by it as by any other creating. "I just thought of this," Mary explained, looking vaguely at her visitor. "It come to me like a flash when I was working on Mis' Bates's basque. Will you wait just a minute, and then I'll explain it out to you." Without invitation, Mis' Winslow laid aside her coat and waited, watching Mary curiously. She was cutting and folding and pinning her tissue paper, oblivious of any presence. Alarm, suspense, doubt, solution, triumph, came and went, and neither woman was conscious that the flame of creation burned and breathed in the room as truly as if the product were to be acknowledged. "There!" Mary cried at last. "See it--can't you see it?--in gray wool?" It was the pattern for a boy's topcoat, cunningly cut in new lines of seam and revers, with a pocket, a bit of braid, a line of buttons laid in as delicately as the factors in any other good composition. Mis' Winslow inevitably recognized its utility, exclaimed, and wondered. "Mary Chavah! How did you know how to do things for children?" "How did you know how?" Mary inquired coolly. "Why, I've had 'em," Mis' Winslow offered simply. "Do you honestly think that makes any difference?" Mary asked. Mis' Winslow gasped, in the immemorial belief that the physical basis of motherhood is the guarantee of both spiritual and physical equipment. "Could you have cut out that coat?" Mary asked. Mis' Winslow shook her head. She was of those whose genius is for cutting over. "Well," said Mary, "I could. It ain't having 'em that teaches you to do for 'em. You either know how, or you don't know how. That's all." Mis' Winslow reflected that she could never make Mary understand--though any mother, she thought complacently, would know in a minute. The cutting of the coat did give her pause; but then, she summed it up, coat included, "Mary was queer"--and let it go at that. "I didn't know," Mis' Winslow said then, "but what I could help you some about the little boy's coming. Seven-under-fifteen does teach you something, you've got to allow. Mebbe I could tell you something, now and then. Or if we could do anything to help you get ready for him...." "Oh," said Mary, in swift penitence, "thank you, Mis' Winslow. After he comes, maybe. But these things now I don't mind doing. The real nuisance'll come afterwards, I s'pose." Mis' Winslow smiled in soft triumph. "_Nuisance!_" she said. "That's what I meant comes to you by having 'em. You don't think so much of the nuisance part as you did before." "Then you don't look the thing in the face," said Mary, calmly. "That's all about that." "Well," Mis' Winslow said pacifically, "when's he coming?"