The inspiration of the fund was the children that were to be. The fund had ample time for accretion, since the children were as late as Never is. Such things are not discussed, of course, in Carthage. And nobody knew how fiercely they yearned. Nobody knew of the high hopes that flared and faded. After the first few months of marriage Eddie had begun to call Pheeny "Mother"--just for fun, you know. And it teased her so that he kept it up, for he liked a joke as well as the next fellow. Before people, of course, she was "Pheeny," and, on very grand occasions, "the wife." "Mrs. Pouch" was beyond him. But once, at a sociable, he called across the room, "Say, mother!" He was going to ask her whether she wanted him to bring her a piece of the "chalklut" cake or a hunk of the "cokernut," but he got no farther. Nobody noticed it; but Eddie and Pheeny were consumed with shame and slunk home scarlet. Nobody noticed that they had gone. Time went on and on, and the fund grew and grew--a little coral reef of pennies and nickels and dimes. The amusements of the couple were petty--an occasional church sociable was society; a revival period was drama. They never went to the shows that came to the Carthage Opera House. They did not miss much. Eddie wasted no time on reading any fiction except that in the news columns of the evening paper, which a boy threw on the porch in a twisted boomerang every afternoon, and which Eddie untwisted and read after he had wiped the dishes that Pheeny washed. Ellaphine spent no money on such vanities as novels or short stories, but she read the edifying romances in the Sunday-school paper and an occasional book from the Sunday-school library, mainly about children whose angelic qualities gave her a picture of child life that would have contrasted strongly with what their children would have been if they had had any. Their great source of literature, however, was the Bible. Soon after their factory passed out of their control and their evenings ceased to be devoted to riddles in finance, they had resolved to read the Bible through, "from kiver to kiver." And Eddie and Ellaphine found that a chapter read aloud before going to bed was an excellent sedative. They had not invaded Genesis quite three weeks before the evening when it came Eddie's turn to read aloud the astonishing romance of Abram, who became Abraham, and of Sarai, who became Sarah. It was very exciting when the child was promised to Sarah, though she was "well stricken in age." Eddie smiled as he read, "Sarah laughed within herself." But Pheeny blushed. Ellaphine was far from the ninety years of Sarah, but she felt that the promise of a son was no laughing matter. These poignant hopes and awful denials and perilous adventures are not permitted to be written about or printed for respectable eyes. If they are discussed it must be with laughing ribaldry.