As Elmira's green skirts fluttered out of sight behind some lilac-bushes pluming to the wind with purple blossoms Jerome came in, and his mother turned to him. "I guess Elmira will do about as well as any of the girls," said she, with her tone of blissful yet half-vindictive triumph. Jerome looked at her wonderingly. "Why shouldn't she?" said he. Immediately Mrs. Edwards put forth her feminine craft like an involuntary tentacle of protection for her excess of imagination, against the masculine practicality of her son. Neither she nor Elmira had said anything about Lawrence Prescott to him; both knew how he would regard the matter. It seemed to Mrs. Edwards that she had fairly heard him say: "Marry Doctor Prescott's son! You know better, mother." Now she, with her Bible on her knees, shunted rapidly the whole truth behind a half-truth. "I guess she'll cut full as good a figure in my old silk and her old bonnet with a new ribbon on it as any of the girls," said she. Then she added, with a skilful swerve from whole truths and half-truths alike: "You'd better hurry, Jerome, or you'll be late to meetin'. Elmira is out of sight, an' the bell's 'most stopped tollin'." "I am not going this morning," said Jerome. "Why not, I'd like to know?" "John Upham sent his oldest boy over here this morning to tell me the baby's sick. I am going over there and see if I can do anything." "I should think John Upham had better send for Doctor Prescott instead of taking you away from meeting." "You know he won't, mother. I believe he'd let the baby die before he would. I've got to go there and do the best I can." "Well, all I've got to say is, he ought to be ashamed of himself if he'd let his own baby die before he'd call in the doctor, I don't care how bad he's treated him. I shouldn't wonder if John Upham was some to blame about that; there's always two sides to a story." Jerome made no reply. He would have been puzzled several times lately, had he considered it of sufficient moment, by his mother's change of attitude towards Doctor Prescott. He went to the china-closet beside the chimney. On the upper shelves was his mother's best china tea-set; on the lower a little array of cloudy bottles; some small bunches of herbs, all nicely labelled, were packed in the wide space at the bottom. His mother's antagonistic eyes followed him. "I dun'no' as I can have them herbs in my china-closet much longer," said she; "they're scentin' up the dishes too much. If I want to have a little company to tea, I ain't goin' to have the tea all flavored with spearmint an' catnip." "Well, I'll move them when I come home," said Jerome, with his usual concession, which always aggravated his mother more than open rebellion, although she admired him for it. "I only brought those little bundles down from the barn loft to have them handy. I'll rig up a cupboard for them in the woodshed."