Caught, she stood her ground. She never paused a second. Straight to him she went, holding out her hand, and I could see that it was red and warm from pressing the lace in the hot suds. A something flashed over her, that made her more beautiful than she was in her silk dress going to town to help Lucy give a party, and her voice was sweet as the bubbling warbler on the garden fence when he was trying to coax a mate into the privet bush to nest. Mother asked him to be seated, so he took one of the chairs nearest him, and sat holding his hat in one hand, his whip in the other. Mother drew a chair beside the dining table, dropped her hands on each other, and looking in his eyes, she smiled at him. I tell the same thing over about people's looks, but I haven't told of this smile of mother's; because I never saw exactly how it was, or what it would do to people, until that morning. Then as I watched her--for how she felt decided what would happen to me, after Mr. Pryor was gone I saw something I never had noticed until that minute. She could laugh all over her face, before her lips parted until her teeth showed. She was doing it now. With a wide smile running from cheek to cheek, pushing up a big dimple at each end, her lips barely touching, her eyes dancing, she sat looking at him. "This IS the most blessed season for warming up the heart," she said. "If you want the half of my kingdom, ask quickly. I'm in the mood to bestow it." How she laughed! He just had to loosen up a little, and smile back, even though it looked pretty stiff. "Well, I'll not tax you so far," he said. "I only want Mr. Stanton." "But he is the whole of the kingdom, and the King to boot!" she laughed, dimpled, and flamed redder. Mr. Pryor stared at her wonderingly. You could even see the wonder, like it was something you could take hold of. I suppose he wondered what could make a woman so happy, like that. "Lucky man!" he said. "All of us are not so fortunate." "Then it must be you don't covet the place or the title," said mother more soberly. "Any woman will crown the man she marries, if he will allow her. Paul went farther. He compelled it." "I wonder how!" said Mr. Pryor, his eyes steadily watching mother's face. "By never failing in a million little things, that taken as a whole, make up one mighty big thing, on which he stands like the Rock of Ages." "Yet they tell me that you are the mother of twelve children," he said, as if he marvelled at something. "Yes!" cried mother, and the word broke right through a bubbling laugh. "Am I not fortunate above most women? We had the grief to lose two little daughters at the ages of eight and nine, all the others I have, and I rejoice in them."