Mrs. Maxwell's face was frowning with innocent purpose, but there was a sly note in her voice. She hurried out of the room and they heard her call, "Flora! Flora!" in the entry. Then they heard her footsteps on the cellar stairs. Lois turned to her mother. "Mother," said she, "I can't stand it--I can't stand it anyway in the world." Her mother turned over another page of the photograph album. She looked at a faded picture of a middle-aged woman, whose severe and melancholy face seemed to have betrayed all the sadness and toil of her whole life to the camera. She noted deliberately the old-fashioned sweep of the skirt quite across the little card, and the obsolete sleeves, then she spoke as if she were talking to the picture: "I'm a-followin' out my own law an' my own right," said she. "I ain't ashamed of it. If you want to be you can." "It's awful. Oh, mother, don't!" "A good many things are awful," said her mother. "Injustice is awful; if you want to set yourself up against your mother, you can. I've laid out this road that's just an' right, an' I'm goin' on it; you can do jest as you're a-mind to. If you want to tell her when she comes back, you can. I ain't ashamed of it, for I know I'm doin' what is just an' right." Mrs. Field noted how the photographed woman's dress was trimmed with fringe, after the fashion of one she had worn twenty years ago. Lois looked across the room at her mother's pale, stern face bending over the album. The garlands on Mrs. Maxwell's parlor carpet might have been the flora of a whole age, she and her mother seemed so far apart, with that recession of soul which can cover more than earthly spaces. To the young girl with her scared, indignant eyes the older woman seemed actually living and breathing under new conditions in some strange element. "Flora, Flora, where be you?" Mrs. Maxwell called out in the entry. They heard her climbing the chamber stairs; but she soon came into the parlor with a little glass of currant wine. "Here, you'd better drink this right down," she said to Lois; "it won't hurt you. I don't see where Flora is, for my part. She ain't upstairs. Drink it right down." Lois drank the little glass of wine without any demur. Her mother glanced sharply at the album as she took it. "I can't imagine where Flora is," said Mrs. Maxwell. "I saw somebody go out of the yard a while ago," said Lois. "You did? Was she kind of stout with light hair?" "Yes, 'm." "It was Flora then. I don't see where she's gone. Mebbe she went down to the store to get some more thread for her tidy. Now I guess you'll feel better." "Who's this a picture of?" asked Mrs. Field. "Hold it up. Oh, that's Mis' John Robbins! She's dead. Yes, I guess Flora must have gone after that thread. She'll show you how to make that tidy, Lois, if you want to learn; it's real handsome. I guess she'll be here before long."